Families of victims of Colombia's paramilitaries get their day in US court

[Judi Lynn]

Hernán Giraldo Serna, one of the leaders of a rightwing force that escaped trial for crimes against humanity to face drug charges in the US, oversaw 270 murders

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The AUC rightwing paramilitaries left victims all over Colombia. Here family members mourn at a funeral in Buga, about 160 miles south-west of Bogotá, in 2001. Photograph: Oswaldo Paez/AP



Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
Thursday 2 March 2017 06.00 EST


Hernán Giraldo Serna and the men who were under his command in a broad area of northern Colombia murdered more than 270 farmers, indigenous leaders and leftist organizers.

They forcibly disappeared and tortured many of their victims; thousands more fled their homes in fear. Giraldo won the nickname “the Drill” for the dozens of young girls and women he raped. Twenty-four bore his children.

But when Giraldo faces a federal court in Washington DC on Friday it won’t be for any of those crimes. Rather, he will be sentenced for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States when he was a leader of a rightwing paramilitary group through which he lorded over the northern slopes of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

However, in a precedent-setting twist to the case, the family of Julio Henríquez, who was tortured and murdered by Giraldo’s henchmen in 2001, will be allowed to address the court about the impact of his crimes.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/02/colombia-paramilitaries-victims-us-court


[center]

Hernán Giraldo Serna, in the center.



Hernán Giraldo Serna, drinking coffee
with former President Alvaro Uribe, US ally.[/center]

LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141717982