Colombia army's 'bounty' on rebels probed in wrongful deaths

[Judi Lynn]

Source: McClatchy, Miami Herald

Posted on Sunday, June 14, 2009
Colombia army's 'bounty' on rebels probed in wrongful deaths

By Gerardo Reyes and Gonzalo Guillen | El Nuevo Herald
GRANADA, Colombia — Fabio Rodríguez Benavides, 23, a cheerful young man known as Little Horse because of the size of his teeth, said goodbye to his mother at about 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 24, 2007, to meet his girlfriend and have some drinks.

Three days later, he turned up dead. Authorities say he was killed in a firefight with the Colombian armed forces, that he was well armed and wore the boots of a rebel fighter.

His family says that's preposterous; he was a member of the armed forces, on leave because of an injured leg, and he revered the military.

~snip~
According to judicial organizations and human rights activists, the motive was money -- specifically, a bounty placed on the heads of rebels.

Working from what is more or less a rate card set by the government, members of the military can claim cash rewards, promotions, even vacations for eliminating an enemy of the state. And, if the victim is not an actual rebel, he or she can be stuffed into a rebel uniform postmortem, according to judicial investigations.


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/70025.html

[justinaforjustice]

1. Were Colombia's Bounty Murders Funded by U.S. Aid?

Since 2005, Colombia has had a secret program of paying its soldiers to kill "guerrillas". The result is hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people have been killed by Colombian soldiers eager to earn the promised rewards. In their eagerness, they plant weapons and guerrilla-related clothing on the innocents. The really shocking suggestion in this story is that Colombia's Department of Defense may have used U.S. aid money to fund these murders.

All U.S. aid -- and free trade agreements -- to Colombia must be halted.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Witness relays horror of military executions

Posted on Monday, 06.15.09
.COLOMBIA | SECOND IN A THREE-PART SERIES
Witness relays horror of military executions
A survivor's account sheds light on the 'false positive' executions that have brought grief to thousands of Colombian families and inflamed world opinion.

BY GONZALO GUILLEN
El Nuevo Herald
NEIVA, Colombia -- Wounded by two pistol shots in the nocturnal solitude of the hills, peasant Aladino Ríos was cool-headed enough to ask his captors why they wanted to kill him.

None of the soldiers who participated in the execution attempt dared to answer. Surviving by a miracle, Ríos still waits for an answer.

Ríos, 33, escaped a ''false positive'' execution the night of Aug. 14, 2007, at the hands of the Berlin 2 Patrol of the Magdalena Battalion, headquartered in the municipality of Pitalito under the command of Army Brigade 9. The brigade was led by Brig. Gen. William Fernando Pérez Laiseca, according to the Colombian attorney general's office.

A man abducted with Ríos the same night, Albeiro Hernández Cerón, was executed. Next to his body was a pistol that did not belong to him and had never been fired, according to forensic experts.

''I was a wreck,'' said Ríos, recalling the hours that followed his escape, when, bleeding and terrified, he managed to find help. ``And the other boy stayed back there, tied up.''

According to court documents, the death of Hernandez, the father of a 3-year-old boy and a girl about to be born, was cause for a commendation to the army patrol. In addition, the army attributed to him a criminal record that was posthumously dismissed by the Attorney General's Office.

El Nuevo Herald interviewed Ríos, who has just asked the United Nations for protection, after narrating his case to Philip Alston, the U.N.'s rapporteur for nonjudicial executions, who on June 8 began a 10-day investigative visit to Colombia.

Rios' exceptional testimony provides an eyewitness account of how these nonjudicial executions are carried out, minute by minute. The tragedy has brought grief to thousands of Colombian families and has horrified world opinion.

The expression ''false positive'' was coined by the Colombian press. In the country's military jargon, a ''positive'' is an enemy casualty.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1097421.html

[Judi Lynn]

3. Murder of civilians in Colombia must be punished

Murder of civilians in Colombia must be punished
The Miami Herald |
last updated: June 22, 2009 12:20:46 PM

A United Nations investigator confirmed last week what had become all too evident in a series of reports in this newspaper about the appalling murder of innocent civilians in Colombia by members of the armed forces.

After a 10-day visit to the country, U.N. official Philip Alston minced no words in condemning what he called "the cold-blooded, premeditated murder of innocent civilians for profit." He rejected the notion that this reprehensible practice was the work of a few bad apples:

"The sheer number of cases, their geographic spread, and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the military."

This is unusually straight talk for a U.N. diplomat, but altogether justified by events on the ground. Ever since Gen. Mario Montoya, commander of the army, resigned last year after an investigation tied dozens of military personnel to these killings, the scandal has become a source of embarrassment and shame for President Alvaro Uribe.

More:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/v-print/story/70465.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Military assistance to Colombia

Military assistance to Colombia
23 June 2009 at 23:15 by VeggieKris
Tags: Colombia human rights killings Tony Lloyd MP

More than 240 MPs have signed a motion (EDM 713) to freeze UK military aid to Colombia until human rights concerns have been satisfied.

Among 242 who have signed the motion there is very solid support from MPs of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party, almost all the Liberal Democrats but rather less than half of those in Labour. The number of Conservative MPs who have signed so far is the same as the number from Plaid Cymru – three.

The motion, put forward by Tony Lloyd MP, quotes the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who believes that the security forces in Colombia are involved in "widespread and systematic" killings of civilians. His motion also refers to the view of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, that military assistance from the UK is inappropriate given the serious human rights situation in Colombia.

http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=3402

[Judi Lynn]

5. The Uribe Government of Colombia

The Uribe Government of Colombia
Wednesday, 24 June 2009, 10:07 am
Press Release: Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Majority Leader Hoyer Needs to Know that the Uribe Government of Colombia is Not Fit for an FTA

The most outspoken Democratic proponent of an ill-deserved Free Trade Agreement with Bogotá has not only reversed his own position on the deal, but has defended and legitimized a corrupt, venal government, heavily tied to political scandals and human rights violations, whose legislative backers are being indicted in droves. Only Colombia’s elite will be the major beneficiaries of an FTA and not the average American or Colombian. Is the Majority Leader sufficiently resolved in his convictions to debate the issue?

Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe will be in Washington on Monday, mainly to drum up support for his signature economic policy, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA). The trade deal was negotiated under the second Bush administration but blocked by House Democrats in April 2008, primarily in response to the endemic violence against trade unionists that continues to plague Colombia. Although President Obama echoed his party’s criticisms of the CFTA during his presidential race, he has not taken long to respond to the persistent courting of the Colombian government, which has aggressively lobbied in favor of the agreement. At the April 2009 Summit of the Americas, Obama and Uribe joined for an unplanned lunch to discuss the agenda for the security and development of Colombia, reaffirming the close, if ill-deserved relationship the two nations have enjoyed under previous administrations. The following day, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced that he would begin extensive consultations with Congress to work toward the ratification of the CFTA. Uribe’s invitation to the White House, another outcome of the Summit, offers him a chance to bolster the growing chorus of Congressional, media, and business voices that are prioritizing the CFTA over an adhesion to high human rights and democratic principles in Colombia.

Opposing Delegations
Far less publicized than the Obama-Uribe meeting at the Summit, but equally important in paving the way for the resumption of CFTA discussions, was the visit to Colombia two weeks earlier by a eleven-member Congressional delegation led by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). Hoyer’s ardently pro-FTA delegation traveled to Cartagena, Colombia to meet with President Uribe and several of his Cabinet Ministers. Hoyer lauded the Uribe administration’s use of Plan Colombia aid, its reported “progress” on human rights, its fight against drug traffickers, and its petition for an FTA with the United States. He expressed his personal support for the FTA, claiming its importance “not only the economic relationship of Colombia and the United States, but also the people of Colombia.” The sad fact is that Hoyer is probably bereft of a serious understanding of Colombia’s grim realities which, under Uribe, have transformed Colombia into a dictatorial democracy where otherwise innocent Colombians are under constant danger from the security forces and corrupt factions tied to the presidency itself.

Hoyer’s assessment starkly differed from the evaluation advanced by a contemporaneous delegation of twenty U.S. and British legislators and trade unionists, which took the time to meet with average Colombians—mothers, peasants, labor rights workers—and listened to testimonies of the atrocities perpetrated by right-wing paramilitaries in the name of fighting leftist rebels and drug traffickers. The members of this counter-delegation, which included U.S. Representative James McGovern (D-MA), became “convinced” that the Colombian government and military fully support and condone the paramilitary activities. In a final statement, they demanded that, “there will be no free trade pact with Colombia whatsoever until human rights and union rights are respected in an internationally verifiable way.”

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0906/S00345.htm