Vicente Castaño sentenced for murdering AUC leader brother

[Judi Lynn]

Vicente Castaño sentenced for murdering AUC leader brother
Thursday, 17 March 2011 10:33
Jim Glade



The assumed dead Vicente Castaño on Thursday was sentenced in absentia for the murder of his brother ex-AUC leader Carlos Castaño Gil.

A Bogota court sentenced Jose Vicente Castaño alias " El Profe" to 40 years along with eight other former AUC members for the murder of the AUC founder, Carlos Castaño.

The ruthless leader from Amalfi, Antioquia started the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia together with his brother Fidel in 1997 to combat FARC guerrillas and over time grew critical of the organization's links with drug trafficking.

It is suspected that his death in April of 2004 was ordered by top AUC leaders, including his brother Vicente, who were increasingly involved in the lucrative drug trafficking business.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/14963-vicente-castano-sentenced-for-death-of-his-auc-leader-brother.html

http://historico.elpais.com.co.nyud.net:8090/paisonline/fotos_notas/casta5.jpg http://www.latinamericanstudies.org.nyud.net:8090/castano-2002.jpg http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/42049000/jpg/_42049654_060905castanno.jpg



Nutso sociopathic, murderous brother Carlos "Monoleche" Castano, R.I.P.

Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Body of Colombian warlord found
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Resolving one of the mysteries in a brother-against-brother story that has transfixed Colombia, the nation's chief federal prosecutor confirmed Monday that a skeleton dug from a shallow grave belonged to warlord Carlos Castano, the founder of the far-right paramilitaries who mysteriously disappeared two years ago.

"The federal prosecution has the full identification that this is Castano," said Mario Iguaran, pointing to a 99.99 percent match between Castano's DNA and that of the skeleton, which was uncovered in northern Colombia on Friday after a paramilitary gunman who confessed to killing Castano in April 2004 led investigators to the scene.

The federal prosecutor accuses Carlos' older brother Vicente of ordering the killing, allegedly because he feared his younger sibling would turn over information on his drug-trafficking activities in exchange for leniency in negotiations with the United States.

The government is demanding that Vicente surrender and has threatened to withdraw benefits of the peace process Vicente himself helped negotiate -- and Carlos helped initiate -- including suspension of extradition and prison time limited to eight years.

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/283774_colombia05.html


Carlos Castaño's skull
Posted by Adam Isacson

In the late 1990s, when I first started working on U.S. policy toward Colombia, Carlos Castaño was the most feared man in the country. He had just grouped the country's various far-right-wing "self-defense" or paramilitary groups into an umbrella organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. He was the lord of all warlords.

Castaño's men were on the rampage throughout Colombia, taking guerrilla-held territory with a brutal scorched-earth campaign that every year left thousands of civilians dead, hundreds tortured, and tens of thousands forced from their homes. By the late 1990s, according to human-rights groups, Castaño's men had come to be responsible for three-quarters of all civilian deaths in Colombia's armed conflict. Fed with drug money, their numbers were swelling, from about 4,000 in 1998 to perhaps 12,000 in 2002. The country's labor leaders, journalists, human-rights activists and opposition politicians lived in constant fear of Carlos Castaño and his organization; many were killed and many more were forced into exile.

Yet even as late as 2000, little was publicly known about Castaño himself. He was a young man, born in 1965, from a family that owned land in rural areas not far from Medellín. Leftist guerrillas killed his father, and he and his brothers formed a "self-defense" group in the 1980s to fight them - or at least to fight civilians living in guerrilla-controlled areas. This effort grew rapidly, helped along by the support - sometimes active, sometimes tacit - of wealthy Colombians and the state security forces. But even as late as 2000, most Colombians didn't even know what Carlos Castaño looked like; the press could only show a small, black-and-white image from his national ID card.

That soon changed. Starting in 2000, at about the same time that the U.S. government began multiplying its aid to Colombia, Carlos Castaño launched a P.R. effort to try to soften the paramilitaries' bloodthirsty reputation. He gave many television and radio interviews defending the AUC's anti-guerrilla mission and warning his enemies (camera crews could always find Castaño, even if the authorities claimed that they could not). Soon all Colombians came to recognize the warlord's gruff voice. The AUC set up a website to which Castaño frequently posted messages. In 2002, he published an autobiography that became an instant bestseller, not even counting the thousands of pirated copies that vendors sold on the streets of Colombia's cities.

More:
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2006/09/carlos_castaos_.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Carlos Castaño murder: Nine men sentenced in Colombia

17 March 2011 Last updated at 16:23 ET
Carlos Castaño murder: Nine men sentenced in Colombia

Nine men have been sentenced to 40 years in prison in Colombia for the kidnapping and murder of Carlos Castaño Gil, the former-head of a right-wing paramilitary group, the AUC.

Among those sentenced was Mr Castaño's brother, Vicente, another AUC leader who is missing and believed dead.

~snip~
The government of former president, Alvaro Uribe, reached a peace agreement with the right-wing paramilitary army and tens of thousands of AUC fighters demobilised in 2006.

But critics say the paramilitaries have held on to their weapons and are now operating as criminal gangs across Colombia.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12779945

[Judi Lynn]

2. Colombia convicts No. 1 fugitive paramilitary boss

Colombia convicts No. 1 fugitive paramilitary boss
March 17, 2011

BOGOTA, Colombia—A Colombian court has convicted the country's No. 1 fugitive paramilitary boss of murder for ordering the killing of his brother, Carlos Castano.

The Chief Prosecutor's Office said Vicente Castano was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 2004 slaying of his brother, who headed Colombia's paramilitary umbrella group.

Thursday's statement did not say when he was convicted.

Colombia's paramilitaries killed thousands of rights activists and suspected leftist-rebel sympathizers.

Most of its leaders were also drug traffickers and Carlos Castano may have been killed for opposing trafficking.

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2011/03/17/colombia_convicts_no_1_fugitive_paramilitary_boss/

[Judi Lynn]

3. The Career of Carlos Castano: A Marriage of Drugs and Politics

The Career of Carlos Castano: A Marriage of Drugs and Politics
August 2001

~snip~
According to official investigators, the Castaño brothers left their finger prints all over the raging political and drug violence of those years. Among the crimes committed on Escobar’s behalf, Carlos Castaño has been charged with the bombing an Avianca plane that blew up in Colombian skies with 111 passengers on board. The Castaño brothers also provided the guns and the expertise for most of the killings that eliminated the left-wing Unión Patriótica Party, that had emerged from President Betancur’s peace talks with the FARC in 1984. They are also charged with the assassination of two left-wing presidential candidates in the 1990 elections. Fidel Castaño built a network, based around drugs, right-wing politics, and army connections, with some of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country. That network has survived to protect younger brother Carlos until today.

In 1993, after falling out with Escobar, the Castaño brothers switched allegiances. With funding from the rival Cali Cartel, they formed a 50-man death squad, "Los Pepes" (People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar). Before long, Los Pepes had become indispensable allies of official efforts led by the CIA’s Delta Search Force, in collaboration with the Colombian narcotics police and the DEA, to track and kill the fugitive Escobar.

By the mid-nineties, after the mysterious disappearance of Fidel, Carlos Castaño was back on the northern coast at the head of a new paramilitary force, the "Self-Defense Groups of Córdoba and Uraba" (the ACCU). Sponsored by wealthy landowners, and supported by the army’s 17th Brigade, the ACCU fought a savage Dirty War to drive the FARC from Uraba, and consolidated Castaño’s control over an expanding personal fiefdom in Córdoba and northern Antioquia.

In 1997, Castaño brought Colombia’s dozen or so regional paramilitaries under his military and political leadership to form the AUC. At the AUC’s National Congress, held in Antioquia in August 1999 and attended by civilian and military advisors, the blueprint was drawn up for the formation of a new, national socialist political and military movement, and the decision was adopted to campaign by all possible means for political recognition of the AUC.

http://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/the-career-of-carlos-castano-a-marriage-of-drugs-and-politics/