Colombia arrests politician in journalist's murder

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Colombia arrests politician in journalist's murder
The Associated Press
Published: August 28, 2008

BOGOTA, Colombia: Colombian authorities say they have arrested a regional lawmaker suspected of masterminding the 1998 killing of a radio journalist.

Chief Prosecutor Mario Iguaran says police on Wednesday detained Carlos Augusto Rojas, a Conservative Party member and the president of the Huila Assembly, in the southern city of Neiva.

Nelson Carvajal, who was also a high school teacher, was gunned down on April 16, 1998, as he left school in the southern town of Pitalito. His radio opinion program had been strongly critical of political corruption in the region.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 30 journalists were killed in Colombia between 1997 and 2007.



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/28/america/LA-Colombia-Journalist-Killed.php

[Zhade]

1. Justice, I hope?

NT!

[Judi Lynn]

2. Secrets of Colombia's civil war

Secrets of Colombia's civil war
By JUAN FORERO
The Washington Post
Article Last Updated: 08/28/2008 01:47:34 AM PDT

ANORI, Colombia — A team of forensic anthropologists painstakingly dug up the bodies — two from the town's decaying mausoleum, others from the moist earth in the cemetery, a couple from a field nearby. The preferred method of death: a single gunshot to the head. One young man had been beheaded, his skull now nowhere to be found.
Victims of Colombia's slow-burning but brutal civil war, they had been killed by right-wing death squads and left on roadsides and in ditches around this northern town. Their impoverished relatives, too fearful to report the slayings, hastily buried the bodies and never told authorities.

The scene had been repeated across Colombia for a generation, as illegal paramilitary gunmen, often working closely with army units, killed thousands of people in their war against leftist insurgencies and, in most cases, disposed of them in shallow, unmarked graves. With Colombia's economy booming and its government feted from Washington to Paris for its recent success against Marxist guerrillas, the disappearances of mostly peasant farmers, in a campaign that intensified in the 1990s, have been largely overlooked.

But government teams have been digging up the bodies and opening a window onto the calculated savagery that long marked this conflict. The remains of more than 1,500 people have been recovered, with DNA testing used to identify 400 of them.

Attorney General Mario Iguaran, whose office oversees the exhumations, said in an interview

that authorities think more than 10,000 bodies might still be scattered across the country.

More:
http://www.montereyherald.com/ci_10324073?source=rss

[Judi Lynn]

3. Oh Brother! Colombian gov't hit by family scandals

Oh Brother! Colombian gov't hit by family scandals
27 Aug 2008 12:38:03 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Colombia's justice minister is resisting pressure to resign over charges that his brother colluded with drug smugglers in the latest family scandal to rock the government of the world's top cocaine producing country.

The case of Fabio Valencia and his brother, who is accused of doing illegal favors for a crime boss while working as a prosecutor, illustrates an increasingly frequent problem for top officials of the U.S.-backed government.

Colombia's thriving cocaine business provides lucrative opportunities that tempt poor and rich alike, often bruising relatives who hold public office.

The brother of the country's respected police chief, Oscar Naranjo, is in a German prison on drug charges.

Naranjo has kept his job but Maria Consuelo Araujo quit as Colombia's foreign minister last year after her congressman brother was jailed on suspicion of using right-wing paramilitary thugs to intimidate voters. Her father is wanted by police for kidnapping a political rival of the family.

More:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N27448285.htm

[Peace Patriot]

4. Is Iguran just going after the lesser players?

The IPS writer (of the following) seems to imply that. (And, if so, why would he shy off on top Uribans?)

See
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3457803

From:
"International Criminal Court Scrutinises Paramilitary Crimes," By Constanza Vieira
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43696

Among those implicated in the scandal is Mario Uribe, the president’s cousin and close political ally, who stepped down as senator to avoid being investigated by the Supreme Court and to fall instead under the jurisdiction of the public prosecutor’s office, which is headed by a former deputy minister of the current government, Mario Iguarán.

(snip)

"The Supreme Court began to investigate him in July 2007 for allegedly receiving support from the paramilitaries in his election campaign and for the purchase of 5,000 hectares of land reportedly acquired by means of threats against the owners.

"But the former senator was released from prison on Aug. 20 after the public prosecutor’s office said there was insufficient evidence to hold him.

"And although the investigation of Mario Uribe continues, it is not including a 2000 land deal with one of the paramilitary chiefs extradited to the United States on drug charges in May, according to the Bogota magazine Semana.

"Three other former lawmakers who quit Congress have also been released from prison in the last few weeks, after witness testimony was dismissed by the public prosecutor’s office.

(emphasis added)

------

So Iguaran has let (or was compelled to let) at least 4 of these criminals go "for lack of evidence," and he has reduced charges in his investigation of Uribe's cousin. And does that "lack of evidence" and reduced charges have anything to do with the mass extradition of Colombia's death squad whistleblowers/sources by the Bush junta, "on drug charges"? The article writer implies this, but is not clear about when Mario Uribe was released (Aug. 20 of what year? I'm not sure.) The sudden, midnight extradition of many of the prosecutors' sources to the U.S. occurred this May. Was it followed by Mario Uribe's release, and reduced charges, this August?

The extraditions sure add to the suspicion that the Bush junta is real dirty in Colombia--on drug trafficking/death squads. Not just helping out their fascist thug pals, but have a personal interest in shutting people up.

Iguaran's hands may be tied, by these extraditions (and other curtailments/sabotage of his investigations). I don't know enough to say, one way or the other, if he is helping to cover up top Uribans' crimes. I think not. I think it's more likely that, as Uribe & co. use every kind of political, legal and illegal tactic--including death threats (which all of the Supreme Court justices and prosecutors have been subjected to)--to evade punishment for their many crimes--Iguaran is being hammpered. And Iguaran can only do so much in those circumstances. This may be why the ICC chief investigator has visited Colombia twice now. He knows what a perilous situation these courts and prosecutors are in.

------------

THIRTY journalists murdered in Colombia in the last decade! Is it any wonder that the Colombian press is in a delirium of cheerleading for this staggeringly criminal government? They know that the least they will get is Dan Rathered, if they don't shake the pom-poms for Uribe, and more likely it will be a bullet through the head.

Besides the personal danger that stalks Supreme Court justices, prosecutors, opposition politicians, union leaders, community organizers, small peasant farmers, human rights workers, voters, peaceful protesters, journalists and anyone who gets in the way or can be murdered for terror purposes (children, for instance)--with 10,000 Colombian military/rightwing death squad murders, all in all, so far--there is also the danger in Colombia of an outright military dictatorship, especially as the Supreme Court, prosecutors and the ICC get closer to top military figures tied to the death squads. The civil government stands on thin enough ground, as it is--riddled with corruption, and ties to death squads and drug trafficking. I don't think it could withstand a military coup, and key people like Uribe and his friends and relatives, might well go along with it.

In Venezuela, when rightwing coupsters of similar stripe tried their violent military coup, the first thing they did was to suspend the Constitution, the courts, the National Assembly and all civil rights. The Colombian military could thus end all prosecutions of its top commanders and of the Uribans, in one fell swoop. This may be what the Bushites want, because Defense Minister Santos--the most likely candidate for head of the coup--is itching to take on Venezuela. And this may also be why Hugo Chavez made a show of support for the treacherous Uribe, last month, in their meeting in Caracas, where they announced cooperative projects (such as a railroad). This accord was preceded by months of Uribe allegatons against Chavez in the press (that he supports "terrorists," etc.) Defense Minister Santos publicly criticized the Uribe-Chavez accord. Chavez said, "Santos is a threat," and urged Uribe to "curtail your Defense Minister." Both the surprising accord, and Chavez's remark about Santos, lead me to suspect that Santos and the Colombian military are plotting a coup in Colombia, in which all vestiges of democracy would be lost (including the civilian justice system), and U.S./Colombian war on Venezuela might well be next (possibly in the form of civil war in Venezuela--secession by the Venezuelan oil-rich state of Zulia, adjacent to Colombia, on the Caribbean, where the Bushites have reconstituted the U.S. 4th Fleet, off Venezuela's coast and Zulia). (Note: There is evidence of a secessionist plot in Zulia--much like the Bush-funded white separatist scheme on-going in Bolivia.)

Justice has to walk this tightrope in Colombia.

------------

And don't you just love how these fascist murderers, drug traffickers and creators of mayhem call themselves "conservatives"?

"Chief Prosecutor Mario Iguaran says police on Wednesday detained Carlos Augusto Rojas, a Conservative Party member and the president of the Huila Assembly, in the southern city of Neiva."

I call them :puke:s.