Scandal of vulnerable Colombian citizens killed for €1,500 bonus

[Judi Lynn]

The Irish Times - Saturday, June 19, 2010
Scandal of vulnerable Colombian citizens killed for €1,500 bonus

TOM HENNIGAN in Bogotá

Many men have been disappearing – only for families to find out the army had shot them

WHEN Luz Marina Bernal’s 26-year old son went missing in February 2008, she immediately raised the alarm. Fair Leonardo Porras Bernal had a mental age of nine, could not read or write, and never strayed too far from his home in Soacha, a gritty satellite town of Bogotá, the capital of Colombia.

“He would never go off on his own. He would only go out with someone from the family. We searched hospitals, refuges, jails and filed a missing person report with the police, but there was no news until that August,” remembers Ms Bernal.

The news, when it came, stunned her. Fair Leonardo was dead, and had been buried in a common grave hundreds of kilometres away in the far north of the country. The army said they had killed him during combat with a group of guerrillas just four days after he went missing.

For Ms Bernal, it made no sense. How had her mentally disabled son transformed himself into a uniformed, armed guerrilla ready to take on South America’s most battle-hardened military, just four days after suddenly disappearing from home?

More:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0619/1224272868802.html

[niceypoo]

1. This is almost a tradition in the Colombian military

Kill campesinos and claim they are insurgents

[Judi Lynn]

2. The Colombian government will NEVER give up this war, since it's their financial bonanza.

Since Bill Clinton paved the way with creating "Plan Colombia," the U.S. has flooded Colombia with over 7 BILLION U.S. taxpayers' hard-earned dollars, well over $600,000,000.00 per year, and THAT was before the latest stage of involvement, the acquisition of the use of 7 separate military bases in Colombia, as well as the free use of ALL airports, construction of various buildings for housing of US troops, and the grant of immunity for all US military personnel who will be stationed there.

Clearly that's going to bring in a second layer of additional lavish taxpayer-derived income in Colombia. The President elect has announced that, in his view, they are really due for some upward adjustment in the cash outlay from the United States to keep up with the rising costs.....

That means that they may start kidnapping people from surrounding countries, and claiming they have caught them trying to attack Colombian troops, and that THEY have bonded with the FARCs as mutual enemies of the fascist Colombian government. They will KEEP producing bodies, and yarns about the terrible enemies they have to fight, and how they need even more money for self-defense. That's fine with the U.S., as the U.S. intends to use Colombia as a base for all "front forward" operations, seeing Colombia as a "lilly pad" as Rumsfeld termed it, from which they can launch all levels of warfare on other countries due to their suspicion those leftists are trying to destroy poor little Colombia. Easy way to cleanse South America AGAIN, for several generations, just as they did already, by using coups, organized torture centers, organized terror tactics like throwing political prisoners out of airplanes, helicopters, rounding up leftists in country after country, housing them in places as large as soccer stadiums, or in military installations, or even in torture ships sailing along the coast, far enough away from land to prevent escape, or detection.

What a shame so few US citizens still have no awareness of what has happened. As we see in Colombia, and Peru, the very same filth is underway there, and has been, for years.

They will NEVER run out of people to kill in Colombia, because the next step will be going to knock off unsuspecting (and defenseless, of course) people from Venezuela, Ecuador Brazil, etc. and claim they had to be killed. Their President elect has already announced he will not hesitate to bomb and invade any country he believes is harboring FARCs. He has written himself a blank check with human lives to spend, waiting ahead.

Very bitter, sorrowful situation. Just like Honduras.