Colombian militia leader confesses to massacres

A senior commander of Colombia's rightwing militias has admitted taking part in some of the country's most grisly crimes in the first of what could become a flood of confessions from demobilized paramilitary leaders. Salvatore Mancuso told a prosecutor in Medellín that he was responsible for hundreds of kidnappings, murders and massacres during his 15-year career in the death squads that spread terror throughout Colombia in the name of fighting leftist rebels. In two days of testimony, Mancuso admitted to directly participating in or ordering the murder of hundreds of people, among them mayors, union leaders and peasants. With presentations projected from his laptop computer, Mancuso listed in chronological order the massacres at El Aro, Mápiripan, El Salado and other towns, all of which he called "anti-subversive operations." He also named the victims. Some relatives of the dead heard the confessions. When Miryam Areiza heard Mancuso read her father's name as he recounted the 1997 massacre at El Aro, where he and 14 others were tortured and killed, she said she felt ill. "Where does he get off saying my father was a guerrilla? My father was a peasant, tending to his farm. He was tortured and killed and Mancuso was responsible," she said outside the special room for victims and their families to watch the closed proceedings. Areiza said she saw little contrition. "He seemed proud of what they'd done, not remorseful," she said. Mancuso recounted how, in each operation, the paramilitaries had direct or indirect collaboration with government forces. But he has implicated only military officers who are dead or already convicted for the crimes he described. He said he planned the El Aro massacre with General Alfonso Manosalva, commander of the army's 4th Brigade, who is now dead. In 2003, a Colombian court convicted Mancuso in absentia for the massacre. Implicating the dead "could be a strategy to prevent corroboration" of the crimes, said Edwin Uribe, a member of the Colombia human rights group Redepaz, who watched the hearing. And Mancuso may be confessing to crimes he did not commit to avoid implicating others, said José Miguel Vivanco, of Human Rights Watch. Under a deal with the government, no paramilitary who confesses all his crimes and makes reparations to victims can be sentenced to more than eight years in prison. "He can acknowledge responsibility in 300 more massacres–he has nothing to lose," said Vivanco. Colombia's paramilitary groups were formed by wealthy cattle ranchers in the 1980s to fight extortion and kidnapping by leftist guerrillas. They became powerful armies in their own right, involved in drug trafficking and extortion. More than 30,000 fighters demobilized as part of a deal with the government. Mancuso's preliminary deposition will continue on Jan. 25.