New book adds to claims Uribe's brother led paramilitary group

[Judi Lynn]

New book adds to claims Uribe's brother led paramilitary group
Saturday, 07 May 2011 21:31
Edward Fox

~snip~
While the 2010 interview by Meneses was crucial in highlighting Uribe's role as the principal financier and strategist for the group, the book delves deeper into the relationship between the paramilitaries and the authorities, a relationship that permitted the killings of peasants, guerrillas and alleged guerrilla sympathizers by the group Behar stated in a recent interview.

Rather than seeing the operational capacity of this paramilitary squad as being a result of individual failings by the police and armed forces, Behar notes that it was down to a deliberate failing by the authorities, using cases provided by Meneses as key examples.

Meneses relayed to Behar how Uribe would often order the police to retreat from their area of operation by some one or two miles in order for a massacre conducted by his gang to take place. When reports would come through to the police, they would be too far away to arrive at the scene in time to detain the perpetrators. For these services, Uribe allegedly paid Meneses personally $2,000 per month.

One incident in particular that highlights this framework perfectly is where Uribe allegedly told Meneses that there was a target of the 12 Apostles arriving into town on a bus. Uribe needed Meneses to clear his men from the bus station to ensure that the paramilitaries could assassinate the man in question. When the man arrived at the station, he immediately became aware of the danger he was in and ran outside to find the nearest police command for help, only to find nobody. Though Meneses' men proclaimed to their commander the need to intervene when guns began to be fired, Meneses warned against exiting from where they were nearby in case they became ambushed by the death squad, a further sign of the power Uribe and his group had over the area.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/16097-new-book-adds-to-claims-against-uribes-brother-that-he-led-paramilitary-group.html