Mancuso admits responsibility for 4 massacres

[Judi Lynn]

Mancuso admits responsibility for 4 massacres
Saturday, 06 June 2009 09:13

Former paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso Friday admitted responsibility for four massacres committed by his paramilitary forces.

The former supreme leader of the AUC is currently tried by Colombian justice from his Washington jail where he is being held on drug charges.

Mancuso admitted to have ordered the massacres of La Gabarra, El Salado, Cucuta and Pichillin. Ninety civilians were killed in cold blood by paramilitary forces in these massacres.

The Prosecutor General holds the former AUC head responsible for the forced displacement of 480 people and the recruitment of 138 minors.

According to the Prosecution, amny of the crimes Mancuso is now tried for were committed with the cosent and participation of the Colombian Armed Forces. Mancuso's personal bodyguards were members of the National Police, the Prosecution claims.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/4406-mancuso-admits-responsibility-for-4-massacres.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. A few facts from his Wikipedia:

Salvatore Mancuso Gómez, also known as "el Mono Mancuso","Santander Lozada" or "Triple Cero", among other names (born August 17, 1964 in Montería, Córdoba) is a Colombian paramilitary leader, once second in command of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group. The paramilitary groups commanded by Mancuso fought the guerrillas (mainly EPL, FARC and ELN), and financed their activities by receiving donations from land owners, drug trafficking, extortions and robbery.

The AUC committed numerous atrocities and massacres against pressumed guerrilla members and the civilian population. Mancuso was initially jailed in a Maximum Security Prison in Itagüí, Antioquia after a peace process that led to his demobilization and then transferred to a prison in the city of Cucuta to from there help identify victims whereabouts. In a surprise move by the Colombian government, Mancuso, together with 13 other top members of the AUC was extradited to the United States to stand trial on drug trafficking charges.

Early years and education
Mancuso was born in Montería, the provincial capital of Córdoba Department. In the northern Colombian Caribbean Region. His father an Italian immigrant and his mother a Monteria native. He is the second of six children. He studied civil engineering in the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and later farming administration in the Escuela de Formación Técnica Agricola in Bogotá. He also studied English at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania<2>.

~snip~
During his Colombian imprisonment, Mancuso had his own website and criticized the Colombian government, led by Álvaro Uribe Vélez on numerous occasions. Many politicians, members of the National Army and government officials, said Mancuso, had links with the AUC.<4>

~~~

In the early morning of May 13, 2008, Mancuso and thirteen other paramilitary leaders were taken from their jail cells in a surprise action by the Colombian government. According to Colombian Interior Minister Carlos Holguin they have been refusing to comply to the country's Peace and Justice law and are therefore extradited to the United States. During his first appearance before the District of Columbia Court, Mancuso refused to speak after having said his name. His lawyer pleaded not guilty for him. <5>

The National Movement of State Crimes, a coalition of several victim organizations that have suffered from state or paramilitary violence, has asked “to return the paramilitary chiefs to the Colombian authorities so they may be processed by the ordinary justice system and not under the framework of the Law of Justice and Peace, since this framework benefits the victimizers and not the victims, since they have not told all of the truth, have not made comprehensive reparations to the victims, and have not dismantled their criminal structures.” <6>

The Office in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that “<...> according to Colombian law, the reasons claimed by the President of the Republic to proceed with the previously-suspended extraditions are also grounds for their removal from the application of the ‘Law of Justice and Peace’ and for the loss of the benefits established therein”.<6>

The Inter-American Commission stated that this “affects the Colombian State’s obligation to guarantee victims’ rights to truth, justice, and reparations for the crimes committed by the paramilitary groups. The extradition impedes the investigation and prosecution of such grave crimes through the avenues established by the Justice and Peace Law in Colombia and through the Colombian justice system’s regular criminal procedures. It also closes the door to the possibility that victims can participate directly in the search for truth about crimes committed during the conflict, and limits access to reparations for damages that were caused. This action also interferes with efforts to determine links between agents of the State and these paramilitary leaders.” <6>

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Mancuso

[Judi Lynn]

2. Simon Romero on his harsh prison life in Colombia:

THE SATURDAY PROFILE; From Jail, Colombian Warlord Ponders Long Years of Conflict
By SIMON ROMERO; JENNY CAROLINA GONZáLEZ CONTRIBUTED REPORTING.
Published: July 28, 2007

ITAGÜÍ, Colombia

IN his prison cell here on the outskirts of Medellín, Salvatore Mancuso reads Gandhi and self-help books. He taps notes to his lawyers into a BlackBerry. He gazes at photos of his 19-year-old wife and 8-month-old son. He listens to vallenato music on his iPod.


And he meditates on the meaning of war.

''There are no good men or bad men in war,'' Mr. Mancuso, 42, Colombia's paramilitary warlord extraordinaire, said in a long, meandering interview. ''There are objectives, and the objective of war is to win by combating the enemy, and the enemy is not fought with flowers or prayer or song. The enemy is fought with weapon in hand, which produces dead men.''

As a commander and the premier strategist for the death squads that committed some of the worst atrocities in this country's long internal war, Mr. Mancuso knows a lot about killing. He put into motion plans that transformed the paramilitary militias from an anti-guerrilla force into major cocaine traffickers and allies -- some say masters -- of high-ranking officials throughout Colombia's government.

With that chapter of war ceding to a more subdued conflict, Mr. Mancuso now spends his days in prison alongside other paramilitary leaders as part of a deal to confess his crimes and pay reparations to his victims. This arrangement allows him to spend just eight years in confinement, and perhaps less, before returning to society.

His confessions have fed the slow-burning scandal over revelations of ties between paramilitaries and a web of elite politicians, army generals and spies, almost all supporters of President Álvaro Uribe. In a country weary of war, Mr. Mancuso has become an uneasy reminder of how the conflict permeated so many areas of life.

''We were the mist, the curtain of smoke, behind which everything was hidden,'' Mr. Mancuso, dressed casually in sandals and a black striped shirt and sitting in an ergonomic chair in his cell, said of the paramilitaries.

A child of privilege, Mr. Mancuso grew up near the Caribbean coast in Montería, the son of an Italian father, a prosperous businessman, and a mother who had been ''Cattle Queen'' in a regional beauty contest. After high school, his parents sent him to study English at the University of Pittsburgh while he took a break from civil engineering studies.

He returned from the United States to a country strained by guerrilla subversion, kidnappings and the rise of drug cartels. As a powerful cattleman by the mid-1990s, Mr. Mancuso formed a paramilitary organization ostensibly to protect the lives and property of his social class.

More:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE4D61231F93BA15754C0A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

[Judi Lynn]

3. Just as we've been saying, Mancuso says in this article:

The Colombian government makes too much money keeping things just as they are right now:

THE Colombian authorities, Mr. Mancuso said, ''don't want to eradicate cocaine because the conflict generates so much international support that puts money on top of the table, and allows so much money under the table in the form of corruption.''

Assessing Colombia's treatment of jailed paramilitary leaders, human rights activists fear that Mr. Mancuso will avoid paying for his crimes.

Under Colombia's lenient rules, Mr. Mancuso could end up spending much less than eight years in a prison where he is already allowed amenities like satellite television in his cell, bodyguards, visits each weekend from his wife, Margarita, and their son, Salvatore, and a laptop computer with Internet access, said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch.

''This is Uribe's gift to the leaders of paramilitarism,'' said Mr. Vivanco, referring to the criticism surrounding the policies of President Uribe in relation to the militias.

More:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE4D61231F93BA15754C0A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all