Colombia Congress investigates president

Looks like the truth is beginning to catch up to El Mono's pal Uribe.

<clips>

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's Congress will look into allegations that President Alvaro Uribe has links to the country's far-right paramilitaries, a member of the committee responsible for the investigation said Thursday.

The 15-member multiparty commission is the sole authority allowed to investigate charges against the president and high-ranking government officials. It must decide whether to dismiss the allegations or present them to Congress, which could potentially recommend censure.

Reynaldo Duque, the secretary for the lower house's Commission of Accusations, told The Associated Press that a lead investigator will be selected next week.

Uribe has been haunted by accusations of collusion with the paramilitaries, and he has always denied them. Investigations against sitting presidents are routine in Colombia, but this is the first time for Uribe.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061201/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_paramilitary_scandal

After all, mighty pResidents like _Bush don't really talk to impeached death squad-loving, proven corrupt little tyrants, do they?

It would be delightful if this investigating group threw concerns about their physical survival to the winds and got serious about this investigation, and turned out an honest product.

From the article:

Analyst Jaime Castro said the investigation will likely have little effect. "The president always has the majority of support in the Congress, so these investigations are always filed away," said Castro, a former mayor of Bogota and constitutional expert.

Some 11 politicians, almost all of them Uribe supporters, are being investigated by the country's Supreme Court for allegedly conspiring with the paramilitaries and four have already been jailed.

The paramilitaries, originally created by landowners and drug traffickers to fight leftist rebels, are accused of some of the worst massacres in Colombia's long-running conflict. They are also accused of exporting hundreds of tons of cocaine abroad.
(snip/)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Chapter #10:

Mapiripan is the site of one of the worst
paramilitary massacres to date, yet many of
the people there voted for the ‘paramilitary’
candidate Uribe. Father Javier Giraldo of
the NGO Justicia y Paz was in Mapiripan
on election day: “There was a great deal of
fraud. There were paramilitaries in the
voting booths. They destroyed a lot of
ballots. This was denounced to the
Ombudsman, but nothing happened.”

Electoral fraud, widespread paramilitary
threats (denounced by virtually all the other
candidates during the election campaign)
and the almost total decimation of the
parliamentary left in the preceeding decade
all contributed to Uribe’s election win.
Though Uribe has vowed that his
‘democratic security’ platform will bring
peace and security to all Colombians,
statistics from the Trade Union School in
Medellin suggest that while the persecution
of the trade unionists and human rights
activists has indeed changed, it has in no
way diminished. The number of trade
unionists killed in 2003 declined to a
‘mere’ 90, suggesting that the
paramilitaries are being reigned in a little.
But the number of death threats issued are
up by 20%, and death threats to trade
unionists’ families are up by 30%. Police
raids, mass detentions and forced
‘disappearances’ are all up too.

Uribe is tightening his grip on the opposition,
and sidling yet closer to the Republican White
House in Washington DC. Uribe was the only
South American leader to back Bush’s
invasion of Iraq. At the time he even went so
far as to invite the Americans to invade
Colombia. Well, George Bush has a lot on his
plate, so in the meantime Uribe hopes to
double the size of the armed forces, and has
asked the Americans for more helicopters, and
for greater involvement in areas such as
intelligence gathering. Many in the Bush
administration are keen to see the US expand
its $1.6bn ‘Plan Colombia’. US Army Lt.
Gen. James T Hill, for example, recently told
a Senate committee that “it would be a terrible
loss if democracy failed in Colombia. You
need to let me get on the ground.”
But before that happens, the Americans are
pushing for Uribe to reign in his illegal
paramilitary allies. The peasant militias and
million-strong informers’ network that Uribe
is pushing for testify to the way in which the
paramilitary strategy is being
institutionalised. Under the ‘state of
emergency’ that he decreed upon assuming
the presidency, the police and army were
granted the right to detain citizens on the
merest suspicion of supporting the guerrillas,
without evidence or legal counsel, and to
enter people’s homes without a warrant.
(snip/...)

http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/pdfs%20reports+mags/Magazine4.pdf

Sounds like Uribe is getting ready to hang his para buddies out to dry... Typical politician--anything to save his own neck. :puke:

<clips>

BOGOTA, Colombia - Escorted by heavily armed soldiers and tanks, Colombia's government on Friday transferred 59 paramilitary warlords who demobilized under a peace deal to a maximum-security prison, citing fears of an escape plot by the men.

...Uribe, a conservative and key U.S. ally in the region, has taken an increasingly harsh tone against the incarcerated paramilitary leaders recently amid a widening scandal linking his supporters in Congress to the far-right militias.

In a speech Thursday, he blamed the killings of two demobilized commanders on those in La Ceja and threatened to revoke the benefits they enjoy under the peace process, which saw more than 30,000 fighters lay down their weapons.

"If there are reasons to bring charges against someone in the peace process, I will personally send a letter to the justice ministry explaining that this person has lost his right to be eligible for the peace process," said Uribe, who added that he could eliminate their protection against extradition to the United States.

One of the incarcerated commanders, Ernesto Baez, told Caracol Radio the authorities were carrying out the killings in order to blame the paramilitaries.

The paramilitary leaders already had been complaining that the peace process, which limits their prison time to a maximum of eight years, was punishing them too much. They had demanded the government pass a decree outlawing their extradition to the United States, where many of them are wanted on drug-trafficking charges.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061202/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_warlords


Colombia's special forces patrol outside of former holiday camp La Ceja, Colombia, Friday, Dec. 1, 2006. Citing fears of an escape plot by some of Colombia's most dangerous men, the government moved Friday to a maximum security prison 59 paramilitary warlords who demobilized under a peace pact. (AP Photo/Luis Benavides)

Colombian senator faces down paramilitaries
Ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro risked all to prod the government to look into officials' ties to illegal militias. Dozens in Congress could be charged.
By Chris Kraul, Times Staff Writer
November 25, 2006


BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Some may object to his politics, but few question the courage of leftist Colombian Sen. Gustavo Petro, whose five-year campaign to prod the government into investigating elected officials' links to illegal paramilitary groups finally bore fruit this month.

Colombia's Supreme Court issued arrest orders for three sitting members of Congress and one former member as well as an ex-governor on charges including murder, electoral fraud and diversion of public funds in collusion with right-wing militia leaders. All charged are from the northern state of Sucre and all but the ex-governor, Salvador Arana, are behind bars.
Arrests of as many as 20 more Congress members may take place soon, officials said this week.

From the floor of the legislature, Petro, a former guerrilla, has declared repeatedly that members of Congress are up to their necks in illegal activities with the right-wing militias in Sucre state and has called on President Alvaro Uribe's government to investigate them.

It has come at great personal risk in a country where opposition to the militias often is a death sentence. The Supreme Court also faces retribution for issuing the orders, as does Prosecutor General Mario Iguaran for requesting them.

Petro routinely receives death threats, and doesn't go anywhere without a security escort of as many as 10 police officers. "They can kill me at any time without the least moral or ethical reluctance," Petro said. "My assassin could be sitting next to me in the Senate."

One of those accused, Sen. Alvaro Garcia Romero, was charged with having ordered militia leaders to conduct a massacre in 2000 and murder an election monitor in 1997.
(snip)

Much damage has been done. Prosecutor Iguaran told reporters that the crisis confronting the Uribe government was worse than that faced by then-President Ernesto Samper in 1994 when it was alleged that his campaign received money from the Cali drug cartel.
(snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-petro25nov25,1,4469447.story?coll=la-news-a_section

Colombia to expose militia's reach
Six lawmakers face questioning by Colombia's Supreme Court this week over their alleged links to paramilitary forces.
By Sibylla Brodzinsky | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA – In Colombia's corridors of power, the tension is almost palpable. People worry and wonder who might be the next target in a widening probe into connections between politicians and the country's powerful right-wing militias that used terror and intimidation to impose their will on the population.
Six pro-government lawmakers face questioning by the Supreme Court this week over their alleged links to paramilitary forces in their home provinces in a scandal that is rocking the country's political establishment to its core.

Collusion between the right-wing militias and the US-backed government's military and police forces is well documented by human rights groups, but until now, the extent to which the paramilitaries had co-opted politics and local government was one of Colombia's best-known secrets.
(snip)

Mr. Isacson says that the scandals could threaten US aid to Colombia's armed forces. "Especially if we see generals and colonels being named, it will affect US aid," he says, noting that already, disbursement of part of US aid for this year has been delayed, apparently over concerns about unrelated scandals in the Army.

The US has provided $4.5 billion of mostly military aid to Colombia since 1999 to fight drug trafficking and leftist guerrillas. "But Democrats in the US Congress now could find ... reasons to question the president," says Gustavo Duncan, a security analyst with the Seguridad y Democracia think tank who has written a book on paramilitary power in Colombia.
(snip/...)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1205/p06s01-woam.html



_Bush and Colombia's President Uribe