Paramilitary commanders: Colombia created death squads

Top paramilitary commanders have in recent days confirmed what human rights groups and others have long alleged: some of Colombia's most influential political, military and business figures helped build a powerful death squad movement that operated with impunity, killed civilians and shipped cocaine to US cities. The commanders have named army generals, entrepreneurs, foreign companies and politicians who not only bankrolled paramilitary operations but also worked hand in hand with fighters to carry them out. In accounts that are at odds with those of the government, the commanders have said their organization, rather than simply sprouting up to fill a void in lawless regions of the country, had been systematically built with the help of bigger forces. "Paramilitarism was state policy," Salvatore Mancuso, a top paramilitary commander, said last week at a hearing. "I am proof positive of state paramilitarism in Colombia." In a scandal that began to gain momentum last fall, investigators have revealed dozens of cases of government collaboration with paramilitary groups. But Mancuso's testimony, buttressed with remarks made in a jailhouse interview by another top paramilitary commander, represents the first time that major players in the scandal have described in detail how the establishment joined forces with them. Dozens of other top commanders are scheduled to testify before special judicial hearings in the coming days and weeks. Their testimony could help uncover the roots of the violence and drug trafficking that have plagued this country and commanded significant aid from Washington. Ivan Duque, a strategist who helped formulate the ideology of the paramilitary coalition known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, said in an interview that the group had alliances with anyone of influence in the regions where it operated. "Could these three groups–I'm talking about political people, economic people, the institutional people, meaning the military–operate without having contact with the chief of chiefs?" said Duque, speaking from the Itagui prison in Medellin, which houses dozens of paramilitary commanders. "That's impossible. That cannot be." Duque said last week that, now that the paramilitary commanders have decided to air their dirty secrets, it also was time for the elites who helped the AUC to come clean. Colombia's paramilitary movement began more than a generation ago to counter a growing Marxist guerrilla force and quickly turned into an irregular army that committed widespread massacres and assassinations, funding much of its operations with cocaine trafficking. The attorney general's office estimates the paramilitary fighters killed about 10,000 people from the mid-1990s until the early part of this decade, when its commanders began negotiating a disarmament with President Álvaro Uribe's government. They also stole millions of acres of land. The AUC is on the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Duque called Colombia's war "dirty, slimy, anarchic, anachronistic," and said paramilitary fighters had killed countless civilians in massacres, contradicting long-held claims that those slain in the attacks were only Marxist guerrillas. And he said that the paramilitary groups also murdered many union members for their "ideological posture," not for purported ties to guerrillas, as was claimed. "It was profoundly unjust," he said. But Duque, like Mancuso, said that much of Colombia has to take blame. "Colombia would turn another page," he said, "if in an act of faith for our country we'd stand up and say straight out: 'Yes, I'm guilty. Yes, I'm responsible.'" Now, in a post-disarmament phase that requires commanders to reveal their crimes in exchange for lenient treatment, Mancuso and others have begun to speak. In 2003, Mancuso was sentenced in absentia to 40 years in prison for his part in a 1997 massacre. Under the peace deal reached with the government, paramilitary fighters are eligible for reduced jail terms–of no more than eight years–if they give details of their involvement in torture, killings and other crimes. The peace deal has been criticized by human rights activists who say it amounts to an amnesty. Mancuso's testimony came in the midst of a difficult week for Uribe, whose administration has received $4 billion in mostly anti-drug and military aid from Washington since his election in 2002. After authorities arrested more congressional allies linked to paramilitary commanders, Mancuso began making his uncomfortable disclosures. The accusations from the former commanders also broke at a sensitive time for Uribe as he seeks to persuade Democrats who control the US Congress to approve a US free trade deal and extend the ongoing, massive military aid package for Colombia to help counter the left-wing insurgency. So far, authorities have charged 14 members of Colombia's Congress, seven former lawmakers, the head of the secret police, mayors and former governors with having collaborated with paramilitary commanders. A dozen more current congressmen are under investigation. Most have been close Uribe allies who supported a constitutional amendment permitting his reelection and approved the lenient law, known as Justice and Peace, that governs the paramilitary disarmament. Though Mancuso testified earlier this year to ordering murders and collaborating with military units, his testimony last week was much more explosive. He spoke of working closely with three former generals, all of whom have denied ties. Mancuso's disclosures–particularly about retired Gen. Rito Alejo del Rio, known in the state of Antioquia as the "pacifier" of the Uraba region–are embarrassing for Uribe. Though Uribe's predecessor, Andrés Pastrana, fired del Rio for collaborating with paramilitary groups, and though the United States rescinded his visa, Uribe has publicly eulogized him as an "honorable man" and defended him in Washington. Perhaps Mancuso's biggest impact came when he said that two current ministers in Uribe's government, Vice President Francisco Santos and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, met with top paramilitary commanders in the 1990s. The two men, cousins in an influential family that owns El Tiempo, Colombia's most influential newspaper, had acknowledged long ago having met with the paramilitary members. Mancuso said the state organized the fighters in the 1990s to retake the country's north from a well-entrenched, extortionist leftist rebellion. He said top army brass helped the illegal militias in training and logistics. The demobilized paramilitaries have described joint operations between paramilitaries and regular army troops. Mancuso alleged that Defense Minister Santos met with paramilitaries in order to plot an overthrow of the 1994-98 administration of disgraced ex-president Ernesto Samper. Santos was not a government official at the time. Mancuso also gave dates, places and the names of others who attended the meetings. Colombia's central government has for years insisted that the paramilitaries were created independently of the state and that only "a few bad apples" in the security forces collaborated with them. "This statement ends the idea that the paramilitaries grew up and operated behind the backs of the political and military class," said Ivan Cepeda, director of the Victims' Movement, who heard Mancuso's statements. Cepeda said Mancuso also testified that in exchange for the paramilitaries' help in exterminating the Medellin cartel and its capo, Pablo Escobar, the government of then-President Cesar Gaviria agreed to create legal vigilante defense groups to combat rebels. Gaviria became secretary-general of the Organization of American States in 1994, a year after Escobar was killed in a police raid. The vigilante groups, known as Convivir, were championed by Uribe when he was governor of northern province of Antioquia, and allegedly disbanded after their links to the paramilitaries were revealed. In his latest testimony, Mancuso also accused US multinationals Del Monte, Dole and Chiquita of funding the right-wing death squads while sourcing bananas from war-torn regions of Colombia. Mancuso said each company paid his men one US cent for each box of bananas they exported. Mancuso did not explain why the payments were made. Del Monte did not immediately respond to the allegation. A spokesman for the California-based Dole Food denied it. In a deal with the US Justice Department, Chiquita recently acknowledged paying the paramilitaries $1.7 million through a subsidiary, Banadex, over six years. It was fined $25 million. The Colombian chief federal prosecutor's office says a Banadex ship was also used to unload 3,000 Kalashnikov rifles and more than 2.5 million bullets in 2001. Labor and human rights activists have long accused Colombian companies and US-based multinationals of routinely paying the paramilitaries to act as union busters and kill union leaders. Mancuso's testimony will add Del Monte and Dole to the list of multinationals that could face congressional hearings in Washington as well as prosecution in the US and Colombia. The warlord also accused coal companies and two Colombian drinks firms, Postobón and Bavaria, of paying the illegal militias for permission to operate. Mancuso said that the coal companies that operated in the province of Cesar, home to one of the world's largest coal reserves, paid "taxes," and that the companies that transported coal paid $70,000 a month to the paramilitaries. Journalists were not allowed in the court, but Mancuso's testimony was confirmed by his lawyer, Hernando Benavides, and Jesús Vargas, a lawyer for victims of paramilitary violence.