Eleven Colombian lawmakers killed by rebel in-fighting

[cigsandcoffee]

Source: People's Daily Online

The 11 Colombian state lawmakers who were killed in June by anti-government rebels were ordered to be killed by a commander during factional fighting, Colombia's intelligence chief said on Saturday.

"The lawmakers were assassinated" under the orders of the 60th Front commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) during clashes with the group's 29th Front between June 10-16 in the southern province of Narino, Andres Penate, head of the country's intelligence agency, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), told a press conference.

The FARC had said earlier the lawmakers were killed in crossfire during a rescue attempt by an unidentified military group on June 18.

Penate accused the FARC of trying to deceive the public by "pretending the hostages were located in the proposed safe haven so they could blame the government for their deaths."


Read more: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/6226475.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. All this information from Uribe's NEXT head of the DAS. Remarkable.

I'm sure he's so much cleaner, also being appointed by _Bush Buddy Alvaro Uribe, than the DAS head, Jorge Noguera, who was removed, due to his criminal associations and actions!

~snip~
Links with paramilitaries

García contends that Noguera maintained a close relationship with Rodrigo Tovar Pupo or “Jorge 40,” the leader of the AUC paramilitaries’ powerful Northern Bloc who controlled (and probably still controls) much of the narcotics transshipment from the eastern half of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. García says that Noguera met several times with “Jorge 40” to talk about local politics, including support for candidates in the 2003 municipal and gubernatorial elections, among them Magdalena department governor Trino Luna.

“On various occasions Jorge Noguera told me that Jorge 40 was very grateful for the collaboration that he had offered him,” said García. A key point of contact between Noguera and “Jorge 40,” according to García, was the paramilitary leader’s cousin, Álvaro Pupo.

José Miguel Narváez, who as subdirector was Noguera’s second-in-command at the DAS, has told Colombian government investigators that Noguera’s relationships with paramilitaries went beyond “Jorge 40” alone. Other paramilitaries who got help from the DAS included Luis Eduardo Cifuentes (“El Águila”), the paramilitary chief in Cundinamarca (the department around Bogotá); Carlos Mario Jiménez or “Macaco” of the powerful Central Bolivar Bloc; and Miguel Arroyave, who headed the “Centauros” bloc in Bogotá and in the southern llanos (the savannahs of Meta, Casanare, Guaviare and Vichada) until his own men killed him in September 2004.

• Narváez said that Enrique Ariza, whom Noguera recruited to be the DAS chief of intelligence, ran a telephone wiretapping operation at the request of “Macaco.”
  
  
• Semana reported that DAS agents protected alias “Salomón,” the right-hand man for a Cundinamarca paramilitary leader known as “El Pájaro,” whenever “Salomón” visited Bogotá.
  
  
• Semana also charges that on two occasions (April and June 2004), senior DAS officials foiled operations against “El Águila” by giving the Cundinamarca Bloc leader advance warning that the police and DEA knew his whereabouts and planned to capture him.
  
  
• Another witness, a 15-year DAS veteran named Enrique Benitez, has said he witnessed Noguera calling off a secret DAS operation to capture Hernán Giraldo, the head of the AUC’s Tayrona Resistance Front on the Caribbean coast. Shortly afterward, the DAS agent who developed the operation was transferred to a post in far-off Arauca department.
  
  
• García said that some DAS contractors paid 10 percent kickbacks to DAS officials, who then passed most of the money on to the paramilitaries.
  
  
• García told Semana, “Once Noguera told me that he had to do a favor for the paramilitaries of the llanos,” meaning Arroyave’s “Centauros Bloc.” Indeed, according to an unnamed DAS agent who complained to Narváez along with fired agent Carlos Moreno, DAS intelligence chief Ariza “stole some intelligence documents on Miguel Arroyave” and erased the information they contained. Added García, “I know that Jimmy Nassar, who ended up being Noguera’s advisor, offered this service. I’ve known people from the Centauros Bloc, here in jail, to whom Nassar offered to erase their files in the system. He charged between 5 million and 10 million pesos (US$2,250 to US$4,500).”
  
  
• Moreno, the fired DAS agent, alleged that the DAS was performing a similar file-disappearance service for Arroyave’s principal rival in the llanos region, Héctor Buitrago alias "Martin Llanos," in exchange for millions of pesos.
  
  
• Cambio reports that the DAS even gave "Jorge 40" an armored SUV intended for President Uribe's exclusive use. “On November 17, 2004, the DAS sub-director at the time, José Miguel Narváez, called the DAS section chiefs in Atlántico and Cesar and told them that, by Noguera’s instructions, they were to place at the disposal of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, Jorge 40, in Santa Fe de Ralito – where the AUC commanders were concentrated – an armored SUV for his personal protection. That did happen, and days later the paramilitary chief was using a red Toyota Prado, license plate QGC851, with armor and a special chip to allow it to pass through the security forces’ roadblocks. The incredible part of this story is that the vehicle had been acquired by the Atlántico governor’s office and given to the DAS for the exclusive use of President Álvaro Uribe when he visits the Atlantic coast. Informed about the matter, the government ordered a search for the vehicle, which was found in Valledupar with Jorge 40 at the wheel.”
  (snip/...)

http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/archives/000242.htm

[cigsandcoffee]

2. Well, either way...

...it probably wasn't a very nice way to go. I find it very sad when hostages die.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Tell that to the Uribe administration, which refused to pull back so the rebels would be able

to turn them over in a neutral zone.

Considering they admit they rushed a rebel encampment only a few days later and ended up killing a hostage, it's very likely they ALSO bungled this one, too, determined to overwhelm the rebels, and kill them all.

You learn to expect things like this from a government whose soldiers, and whose paramilitaries slaughter civilians, then dress them up to look as if they are rebel forces they killed, as mentioned ever so modestly in this open letter from Human Rights Watch to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe:

President Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Presidency of the Republic of Colombia
Palacio de Nariño
Bogota, Colombia

Dear President Uribe,

~snip~
Overall Killings

You state that the overall official homicide rate in Colombia has declined substantially since you assumed office—a fact you attribute to your Democratic Security policies. We recognize that the security situation in several major cities and highways has improved, and that your government appears to have pushed the FARC guerrillas out of many regions, such as San Vicente del Caguán, where they were committing abuses.

However, the official homicide rate, which lumps together deaths from common crime as well as killings committed by all sides in the conflict, is too broad to serve as a useful indicator of human rights abuses. To focus only on this general number masks several very troubling trends.

The number of extrajudicial executions committed by the Army, for example, is skyrocketing—a fact that your own Minister of Defense admitted in meetings with me and other colleagues. The United Nations has a list of over 150 cases of extrajudicial executions of civilians committed by the Army throughout the country in the last two years. The Colombian Commission of Jurists, one of Colombia’s most respected human rights organizations, is reporting over 200 cases a year. In many of these cases the civilian has been killed, and later dressed up as a combatant, apparently to inflate the official enemy body count of the military unit in question.

The number of selective killings committed by paramilitary groups is also cause for alarm. Starting in 2000, according to official statistics, the number of massacres by paramilitary groups started to decline sharply. As described to us by paramilitary commanders themselves in Medellin, this decline reflected a shift in tactics by paramilitaries, who had already taken over control of vast regions of the country, and were starting to focus on consolidating that power. In their view, enforcement of their control no longer required large–scale massacres, but rather only selective killings of persons who they considered enemies.

Thus, the number of paramilitary massacres has dropped substantially. However, the number of selective killings attributable to paramilitaries has remained virtually unchanged for more than a decade, since 1996, despite your demobilization program. According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, to this day paramilitary groups commit between 800 and 900 selective killings per year.
(snip)

Once again, we want to help Colombia to confront the grave threat that paramilitary power is posing to its democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Given the high stakes involved, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to adopt the many recommendations we have made—such as blocking communications between imprisoned paramilitary leaders and their mafias and extraditing to the United States those commanders who fail to turn over assets and cease their criminal activities—to ensure the effective dismantlement of paramilitary groups.
(snip/)

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/02/colomb15833.htm

[Judi Lynn]

3. Critics: Colombia Manipulates Crime Data

Critics: Colombia Manipulates Crime Data
By DARCY CROWE Sunday, February 18, 2007

BOGOTA, Colombia - Critics say President Alvaro Uribe's government is manipulating statistics to make Colombia appear safer than it is, casting doubt on achievements that have made him popular both at home and with the U.S. government.

One of the leading critics is Cesar Caballero, who said he quit as director of the federal statistics office in 2004 because Uribe's office told him not to release a study that found sharply higher homicide rates in major Colombian cities.

"The president's policy is that you have to maintain the perception that security has improved, no matter what the case," Caballero said.

Jose Obdulio Gaviria, a close Uribe adviser, said the government wanted to review the study before publishing it _ though he did not explain why it has yet to be released. Caballero insisted the decision was political.
(snip/...)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2736041

Since the link in this previous post has expired, the story can be read, for a fee, here:
http://www.topix.net/forum/co/bogota/TM7AI18036MHN9VDB

OR, here, where this AP article was also posted:
http://poorbuthappy.com/colombia/post/what-this-mruribe-would-not-lie/