Top Colombian Rebel Extradited to the U.S.

[Rose Siding]

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Top Marxist rebel Ricardo Palmera was extradited to the United States on Friday, becoming the first leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to face U.S. drug and terrorism charges, officials said.

Army commandos with assault rifles and U.S. agents escorted Palmera, wearing handcuffs and a bulletproof jacket, to a U.S. government plane at a military airfield outside Bogota. The plane took off minutes later.

President Alvaro Uribe had given the FARC until Thursday to free 63 hostages or see Palmera, a former FARC negotiator known by the alias Simon Trinidad, stand trial in a U.S. federal court in Washington. The FARC never responded to the ultimatum.

Earlier, a helicopter escorted by three others carried Palmera from his maximum-security prison in Combita, 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of the capital, to Bogota. He underwent a quick medical checkup before boarding the plane bound for the United States.

The group has said it will only release the hostages, which include three Americans and a German, if 500 jailed rebels are freed. Uribe has all but ruled out such a move.

The extradition came despite warnings from the hostages' families and the Catholic Church that it could scuttle efforts to broker a prisoner swap on humanitarian grounds and lead to retaliation by the FARC, endangering the hostages' lives.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-colombia-us-rebel-leader,0,1815844.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

[bin.dare]

1. i want to know why he was extradited to US ...

... "drug and terrorism charges". that's all it takes? Uribe is a pathetic piece of ...

[pinerow]

2. Methinks i smell a rat...is the U.S. DOJ responsible for prosecuting

foriegn criminals for crimes committed on foriegn lands. Yet, heaven forbid the U.S. would participate in the World Court.

[Benhurst]

3. This sort of thing is why they don't want to participate in the World

Court. The Bush Family Evil Empire is a power unto itself.


:spank: corrected typo

[ngant17]

4. vigilante justice at best

Bush's brand of justice is to play the old fashioned vigilante from the Wild West. It only works when you can outgun your enemies, like the cowboys vrs. Indians.

In the long run, it does more damage. FARC is less obliged to negotiate, the escalation of guerrilla and paramilitary violence will continue.

Bush can spend more money on military tanks and planes abroad, and less on civilian hospitals and schools at home. It's all about the escalation of conflict, and he and the military-industrial complex can keep the lucrative contracts going.

Hypocrisy and double-standards go hand-in-hand.

[bin.dare]

6. "extradition to the United States as its most fearsome punishment"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8866-2004Dec17.html

...
Palmera has been convicted in Colombia of rebellion and kidnapping. The government regards extradition to the United States as its most fearsome punishment, partly because imprisonment there would put him out of the reach of amnesties granted in any future peace settlement.
...

[IndianaGreen]

8. The real terrorists are the Colombian government

and the ruling elites it represents. May they all go down in flames as all despotic regimes deserve!

[Minstrel Boy]

5. Narco-Dollars for Beginners: the ultimate cold call

NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso with a FARC Commmander:


In late June 1999, numerous news services, including Associated Press, reported that Richard Grasso, Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange flew to Colombia to meet with a spokesperson for Raul Reyes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the supposed "narco terrorists" with whom we are now at war. The purpose of the trip was "to bring a message of cooperation from U.S. financial services" and to discuss foreign investment and the future role of U.S. businesses in Colombia.

Some reading in between the lines said to me that Grasso's mission related to the continued circulation of cocaine capital through the US financial system. FARC, the Colombian rebels, were circulating their profits back into local development without the assistance of the American banking and investment system. Worse yet for the outlook for the US stock market's strength from $500 billion - $1 trillion in annual money laundering - FARC was calling for the decriminalization of cocaine.

...

It was only a few days after Grasso's trip that BBC News reported a General Accounting Office (GAO) report to Congress as saying: "Colombia's cocaine and heroin production is set to rise by as much as 50 percent as the U.S. backed drug war flounders, due largely to the growing strength of Marxist rebels"

I deduced from this incident that the liquidity of the NY Stock Exchange was sufficiently dependent on high margin cocaine profits (BIG PERCENT) that the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange was willing for Associated Press to acknowledge he is making "cold calls" in rebel controlled peace zones in Colombian villages. "Cold calls" is what we used to call new business visits we would pay to people we had not yet done business with when I was on Wall Street.
http://www.narconews.com/narcodollars1.html

[IndianaGreen]

7. When are we going to extradite Bush, Cheney, Kisssinger et al...

to face charges of terrorism in all of the countries they stuck their bloody hands in?

Ironic that President Uribe of Colombia is the real terrorist, he even had his own private army of death squads.

I quit believing the US Government a long time ago. Any time the US accuses someone of being a terrorist or a narco-trafficer I ask myself what the real American agenda is.

We loved Noriega until he decided to go his own way!

[Minstrel Boy]

9. Plan Colombia is up for renewal next year.

Let the show trials begin!

The co-founder of the Cali cartel, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, was recently extradited to the US to stand trial, too. But "some experts say the extradition is more of a moral victory than a practical one. 'They don't get any bigger than this, but it is largely symbolic,' said Adam Isacson, director of programs for the Center for International Policy in Washington. 'Gilberto is no longer a player.'"

Orejuela gets a mention in Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon.

I wrote more about it here:

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/12/planet-colombia.html