Army Murderers Dress Victims as Terrorists

Mike Power, FirstPost.co.uk

Mariel Munoz was out selling food near her home in Vista Hermosa, Colombia, when a local boy ran up to her and said: "The army took Jailler and I think they killed him."

By the time Munoz (right) found her son, the soldiers had dressed his corpse in guerrilla army fatigues and planted a radio, a gun and grenade on him. Under pressure from President Alvaro Uribe to show gains in the endless fight to destroy FARC - the leftist rebel army which has been at war with the Colombian state since the 1960s - the soldiers were trying to pass off 15-year-old Jailler as a guerrilla.

There is no evidence that the boy was ever a member of FARC. "He worked by his father's side," his mother told me. "When he wasn't here, he'd tell me where he was. He was a decent boy, he didn't like drinking, he liked watching TV and playing football."

Jailler worked stripping the leaves from coca plants - an illegal but common enough job in Colombia, the world's biggest cocaine producer - or as a wood carrier. "Everyone loved Jailler," his mother said. "They killed him for supposedly being a guerrilla, but he never liked the guerrillas, or the army. They killed him because they felt like it."

Mariel Munoz's story might be treated as the outpourings of a grieving mother unable to bear the truth - if her story wasn't a common one. Last month, Amnesty International USA published a report on extra-judicial killings in Colombia, and detailed cases where peasants have been seized by the army in civilian clothes, killed and later dressed in guerrilla fatigues in a phenomenon known as 'false positives'.

Jailler died in 2006. Last year, Munoz decided to launch a legal case to question the killing. In February she had to leave her home when army officers threatened her after learning about the lawsuit.

"The army came to my home. One of them said, 'What a shame that I let you escape,' And then he made a gesture like he was slitting someone's throat. I left everything dumped there, and fled with the clothes I was wearing. They didn't give me time to get anything else."

She now lives in Bogota, supported by friends. "What else am I going to do? I'll keep on fighting," she says.

Jailler's death came in a wave of executions carried out with almost complete impunity by the Colombian army, according to Ramiro Orjuela, a Bogota-based lawyer working for victims of state violence. In the Meta province alone - a cattle-ranching region south-east of the capital - 300 people have been killed since 2006. The army's 12th Mobile Brigade operates there, and is believed to be responsible for most of the killings. reported to be "nearly dying of hunger" when she handed herself in after President Uribe guaranteed her safety if she surrendered.

However, behind the government celebrations of Karina's capture, and of the recent high-profile raid into neighbouring Ecuador to execute FARC's number two, Paul Reyes, the army's casual slaughter of innocent people continues.

As John Lindsay-Poland, of New York's Fellowship for Reconciliation, puts it, the killings are easy: the army are rarely if ever prosecuted for killing civilians, and they measure success by body count. "The predominant proclamation of success is how many guerrillas were killed in combat. There is seldom any punishment for killing a civilian." Out of 955 reported cases of military killings of civilians over five years - including 'false positives' - only two have resulted in convictions.

Mariel Munoz recalls the moment she confronted the officers who confirmed they had killed her son. "They laughed, right there and then."

The Ends Do Not Justify the Means

Rewarding Assassins

'Colombia: Reward for FARC Guerrilla for Killing His Commander'

by Carlos Raúl van der Weyden Velásquez



On March 7th, 2008, it was revealed that guerrilla commander José Juvenal Velandia, aka Iván Ríos, had been killed. Ríos was a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Secretariat, whose number two in command, Luis Édgar Devia, aka Raúl Reyes, had been killed earlier in the month, unleashing a diplomatic crisis with Ecuador, Venezuela, and Nicaragua (Reyes died in a camp inside Ecuador).



First it was thought that the Colombian Army had killed Velandia, but as the afternoon passed, the truth came to light: it turned out Pedro Pablo Montoya, aka Rojas, one of his bodyguards, had murdered Ríos to get a reward from the Colombian government:



Montoya [...] shot his boss Rios with a single bullet to the head, and then killed Ríos's girlfriend. He then cut off Ríos's right hand to take to the security forces to prove he had killed the rebel leader, a member of FARC's seven-man secretariat.



One week later, and after a controversy, on March 14, the government decided to pay Montoya and another guerrilla member a US $2.5 million reward, for the "information" which allowed Iván Ríos to be found. But according to weekly news magazine Cambio's March 13 issue, a former guerrilla gave the information which allowed the Colombian Army to infiltrate FARC's Central Bloc and, through the help of the informant, who was in contact with Rojas, which instigated the latter to kill his commander.



At the digital magazine equinoXio [es], Marsares says:



Al dificultarse su captura, se le da instrucciones para que lo mate, como efectivamente lo hizo, convirtiéndose en instigador del crimen el propio Gobierno que se coloca por encima de la ley. Sencillo. Si no puedes capturar a tu enemigo, ¡mátalo!

A Ríos se le acusaba de haber cometido delitos de lesa humanidad, crímenes de guerra y delitos comunes, es cierto, pero según la Constitución, debía comparecer ante los jueces de la República para luego de ser oído y vencido en juicio, imponérsele una pena. Su ejecución extrajudicial no diferencia al Gobierno de las que hace la misma guerrilla, porque ambas carecen de legitimidad y violan nuestro ordenamiento jurídico. Al gobierno sólo le compete la labor de capturarlos, salvo un enfrentamiento armado que determine su muerte.



When his capture became difficult, they [the Colombian Army] instructed [Rojas] to kill him, as he indeed did, making the Government, who puts itself above the Law, the instigator of the crime. It's simple. If you can't capture your enemy, kill him! Ríos was accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and common crimes, that's true, but according to the Constitution, he should have appeared before the judges of the Republic to be, after being heard and defeated in trial, sentenced. His execution outside of the law does not differentiate the Government from those perpetrated by guerrilla, because both lack legitimacy and violate our legal system. The Government has the duty to capture them, unless there is an armed confrontation which determines their death.



Liberal Colombiano [es] seems to agree with Marsares in his blog:



No se pueden lograr buenos objetivos con malos medios. No se puede mejorar la seguridad y alcanzar promoviendo y pagando por asesinatos. La política de delaciones esta bien para DELACIONES. Nunca para asesinatos. El estado no debe pagar por el crimen de "Ivan Ríos" a menos que de verdad se demuestre que fue en legítima defensa. El derecho a la vida es inviolable e inalienable. [...] Ojala que lo sucedido con Rojas lleve a algunas personas a la reflexión sobre los límites de la acción estatal.

La pregunta de fondo siempre será: que le esta permitido al Estado?



You can't achieve good goals through poor means. You can't improve security by promoting and paying for murders. The tip-off policy is fine for TIP-OFFS. Never for murders. The State should not pay for Iván Ríos' crime unless it's really proved that it was in legitimate defense. The right to live is inviolable and inalienable [...] I wish what happened to Rojas leads some people to reflect about the limits of State action. The bottom question will always be: what's the State allowed to do?



Bloggings by Boz summarizes the debate. These are the pros:



Rojas did bring an end to a top FARC commander (which is the reason the reward exists), possibly saving lives in the process. Additionally, the government wants to create the incentive for other FARC combatants to desert and turn over information about their commanders, and failing to give Rojas the reward could harm that effort. This reward has the added bonus of possibly creating internal dissent within the FARC.



And here are the cons:



Most of the reasons not to give the reward focus on the fact Rojas was a FARC combatant for 16 years and confessed to murdering his commander. Private citizens murdering other citizens does not help the Colombian government's overall goal to enhance the state's legitimate authority across the country. Rewards are meant for citizens to provide information for the government to act on, not for them to act as a mercenary.



At the end, Boz finds himself



tempted to support giving the reward because I want to see the reward program work and I want to see more mid-level FARC commanders desert and turn in information about their superiors. However, a democratic state should not offer mercenary payments. It's a tough rule, but the Colombian government is not going to win back control of the state by taking short cuts.



Finally, Ricardo Buitrago Consuegra is overtly supportive of the payment [es]:



Nadie cuando se instauro la política de recompensas, previo este caso, como nadie, alcanzo nunca a imaginarse, la degradación a la que llegarían los grupos al margen de la ley y la misma sociedad. La recompensa debe pagarse. No hacerlo, seria un pésimo mensaje a miembros de la guerrilla susceptibles de delación de que el estado no cumple. Se constituiría en un retroceso en la aplicación de la política de recompensas, que ha sido fundamental, en el quiebre que ahora se vislumbra en la organización guerrillera. ¿Si el país entero se alegra por la muerte de delincuentes, cual es la razón de privar de la recompensa a quien propicia la alegría? Por lo tanto, o dejamos de ser hipócritas y aceptamos la degradación de nuestros principios, o nos convencemos que en guerra, el pago de este tipo de recompensas se mira desde otro contexto. En ambos casos, a pagar se dijo.



When the reward policy was established, no one could ever imagine to what point the illegal armed groups would go and where Colombian society would reach. The reward must be paid. Not to do it would be a dreadful message to the members of the guerrillas willing to tip-off that the State does not carry out their agreements. It would become a step back in the application of the reward policy, which has been essential getting a glimpse into the guerrilla organization. If the entire country is pleased with the death of the criminals, what's the reason to stopy the reward to those that provide that joy? Therefore, either we stop being hypocrites and accept the degradation of our own principles or become convinced that, in a war, the payment of this kind of rewards can be seen from another context. In both cases, it's time to pay.



On Wednesday it was learned that Rojas will have to answer for other crimes [es], such as "conspiracy for drug trafficking, terrorism, and multiple homicide" relating to massacres he allegedly helped to perpetrate, according to Colombia's Attorney General Office. This should keep the former FARC guerrilla in jail for a while. At the moment, Rojas is staying in a military facility in Risaralda Department, Western Colombia.



You may view the latest post at

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/03/21/colombia-reward-for-guerrilla-man-who-killed-his-commander/

Don't Sleep with Your Cell Phone On

In the movie "Sword of Gideon" two Israeli assassins masqueraded as telephone repairmen. Entering the apartment of a Munich Massacre mastermind, they installed a small bomb in his telephone mouthpiece. After he arrived home, they made an explosive call.
The film impressed me to the point I sold my land line. Until last week I had used a cellular phone.
With the GPSS system, the Americans can locate any cell phone on earth. The ones owned by the FARC men served to guide the American smart bombs to their hideaway.
On Saturday I let my landlord steal my cell phone. If he keeps it charged, he might get a bang out of it.

Bush May Be Raising False Flag Op vs Venezuela

The neocons have two major problems with the Chavez regime in Venezuela. It is a democratically elected leftist government. The country distributes a sizable portion of its oil revenues to poor citizens.
The success of Venezuela puts the lie to the American propaganda effort. Nobody needs an invasion of US troops to establish to establish a democratic republic. American forces are ruinous to domestic tranquility and to economic development.
The people of the world know this and even elements within the brain washed US public begins to see the light. The Bush regime has no social redeeming value. They can only destroy liberty through hate mongering and fear. They build nothing. They burn everything they can't steal from the Global Village.
Still, the Administration enjoys a 19% public approval rating and its chosen candidate John McCain has support from over 45% of voters.They could lose the 2008 election, if they fail to rig the voting machines properly. It is against the New World Order mentality to give the other side anything approaching an even break.
They worked hard to ruin Constitutional guarantees with the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts. Why should they risk handing over these dictatorial powers to Hillary (or to John McCain for that matter)?
The NSPD 51 allows the President to assume dictatorial powers over all three branches of government indefinitely. The NSPD is deliberately vague in its specifications covered by top secret protocols. The officials, the mass media and the public have little knowledge of this project. The President can declare a disaster and establish Military Law. He can suspend elections and ensure himself a third term. Our first indication of this will be when the National Guard breaks down our doors to confiscate our weapons.
George Bush already has a handy excuse for this. He has cleared the invasion of Ecuador with the 'loyal' opposition. The right wing Columbian regime has entered Ecuador to kill FARC terrorists who had sheltered there. They found the dead leader's computer there. On the hard drive was the truncated message in which the Chavez camp was to give FARC $300 millions to buy the makings of a dirty atomic bomb.
Supposedly, this garbled message justifies an attack on the leftist Ecuadorian government Hillary and Barack agreeing.
For $300 millions anyone can purchase several atomic bombs or up to six of the suitcase variety. Available from Israel, Russia or the US State Department, they fit into golf bags for easy delivery. Only a poor fool would buy used uranium to make a bomb.
The UN Charter prohibits Columbia [or the US] from invading Ecuador. The UN should ask its member nations to defend Ecuadorian sovereignty.
Greg Palast, Ourfuture.org, offers a number of fine insights to this sorry event.

Hostage Ingrid Betancourt

Ingrid Betancourt

Mike Power, FirstPost.com

T he raid into Ecuador by Colombian troops to execute Raul Reyes, second-in-command of the Marxist guerilla army FARC, has sparked a diplomatic crisis that is making waves in and beyond South America.

The bold gesture by the Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, friend of Washington, has infuriated his Leftist neighbours Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who have both sent troops to their borders with Colombia.

It has also made a pawn out of the French-Colombian politician, Ingrid Betancourt, who has been held hostage in the jungle by FARC for six years. Far from helping to free the 46–year-old woman, Uribe's raid looks to have spoiled any diplomatic chances of negotiating her release in the near future.

On top of this, there are the extraordinary claims from Colombia in the past 48 hours that they have found evidence on Paul Reyes's laptop that implicates Chavez as a sponsor of terrorism.

Oscar Naranjo, Colombia's chief of police, said documents found on the hard drive of Raul Reyes's computer showed that Chavez has paid $300m to FARC, and that the guerrillas were trying to buy 50kg of uranium to make a dirty bomb.

Naranjo claimed that another document - a letter from FARC leader Manuel Marulanda - offered Chavez support in the event of any US-led attack on Venezuela. The letter also mentioned that Chavez had offered FARC a consignment of weapons.

There is no denying that Chavez has some influence with FARC. It was his negotiations that prompted the release in January of six hostages, a feat President Uribe has been unable to achieve in two terms in office. But Chavez's deputy, Vice President Ramon Carrizalez, derided the Colombian police chief's claims about money and arms. "They can invent anything in order to try to remove themselves from this violation of Ecuadorian territory," he said.

In response, Colombia yesterday invited the UN and regional overseer, the Organisation of American States, to verify the files. Neither organisation has responded publicly so far.

Anecdotal evidence exists that suggests Venezuela has provided weapons, shelter and financial support to Colombia's rebel army; defectors have spoken of receiving co-operation from some members of the Venezuelan military. If the computer documents prove the rebels' connection with Chavez, it will give ammunition to those who have questioned his integrity and see him as little more than an opportunist thug, a Castro with fewer ideals and more money.

To thicken the plot, President Correa said on Monday that his ministers had indeed met with FARC commanders - but only to broker a release of high-profile hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, who was snatched in 2002 when she was campaigning for the presidency of Colombia. Correa said Uribe was aware of Ecuador's involvement in the efforts to free Betancourt, who is known to be in poor health, and that by sanctioning the raid into Ecuador to kill Reyes, Uribe had proved himself "a traitor".

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the death of Reyes was "bad news" because he had been France's contact in its efforts to free Betancourt, who is a French citizen. Not to be outdone, Hugo Chavez's government also said he had been close on several occasions to a deal to free Betancourt.

Of course, Betancourt's liberation would have been a major coup for either of Colombia's leftist neighbours. Some observers believe Uribe could not afford to let either Chavez or Correa succeed, whatever the consequences.

Others argue that the raid may have been worth any price to Uribe. He can now pull back from this surgical strike at the heart of the FARC, and reap the rewards of his boldest move yet as president. Opinion polls show 85 per cent of Colombians supported the raid.

Columbia: the Conflict with Ecuador and Venezuela

'Colombia: The Unsettling Conflict with Ecuador and Venezuela'

by Juliana Rincón Parra, Global Voices

Colombian bloggers are closely following the events unleashed by the Colombian army's incursion into Ecuadorian territory. Fear of war is palpable throughout the discussions on the legitimacy of the attack and its repercussions, the unveiling of computer files establishing nexus between the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan governments and the FARC and the knowledge of 50 KGs of Uranium that the FARC allegedly has.



equinoXio, a longstanding " independent, non partisan Online Digital Magazine" whose English version was recently launched February 3rd, has done a thorough job following the unfolding events in their Spanish version, with a few articles already being translated into English.



In their article "FARC number 2 has been killed in combat near Colombia-Ecuador border" they write:

Luis Édgar Devia Silva, aka Raúl Reyes, the number 2 commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has been killed by security forces, Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Saturday morning.According to Mr Santos, "human sources and information verified by the State's intelligence" told Colombian authorities that guerrilla fighters from FARC's 48th front would meet with Reyes in Granada, a place near Colombia's border with Ecuador on Friday night. An joint operation of Colombia's Military Forces and National Police was held starting at 0:25 local time (5:25 UTC) on Saturday.



Colombian Air Force bombed a guerrilla camp, located 1.8 km from the border inside Ecuador, near Santa Rosa, from Colombia's air space. Guerrilla responded with shooting, killing one Colombian soldier, Carlos Hernández León. According to Santos, Raúl Reyes and Guillermo Enrique Torres, aka Julián Conrado, with other 15 guerrillas, were killed. Their corpses were recovered by Colombian authorities, after the camp was surrounded and Ecuadorian Armed Forces arrived there.

In equinoXio's other article, "Colombia will not send troops to borders to Ecuador and Venezuela" they inform about one of the important issues that has bloggers commenting on possible justifications for the incursion into Ecuador; the belief that they may be helping the FARC terrorists:

Around one hour later, Colombian National Police Director, general Óscar Naranjo, saidReyes, whose content, according to a preliminary report, shows ties between Quito and FARC, through Gustavo Larrea, Ecuador's Internal and External Security minister. The documents (PDF), letters written by Reyes and addressed to the FARC Secretariat, involve some alleged commitments by Ecuador with FARC, which had promised to deliver Correa Army corporal Pablo Emilio Moncayo, kidnapped in 1997, for Mr Correa to become another mediator between the terrorist group and the Colombian government. Ecuadorian officials have denied the claims.

For the moment, all of it is rhetoric and show. Yell at the empire, dress in red, call everyone a lackey, buy weaponry from Russia and trucks from Iran. But while Chávez was slathering himself in geopolitical rhetoric, Colombia was acting and bombing a guerrilla encampment outside its borders in the Israeli style.

Now this has stepped out of Risk strategy plays to real actions. Colombia -in Hugo's [Chavez] mind- is Israel and Venezuela, one can suppose- is something like Iran. And then what happens? Nothing for now.



Pala Labra [es] reflects an opinion echoed by other Colombian bloggers who believe that the political misunderstandings with Ecuador could be better dealt with if Hugo Chávez, Venezuela´s President, kept to the sidelines:

Truth of the matter is that I don't care much for socialism, I'm not pro Uribe, or anything. I'm of the school of thought that believes that everybody in the world could be right, as Fito says, "I don't belong to any -ism". But there are some things that certainly make me mad... yesterday I was listening to that guy [Chavez], only because my dad had the tv on, and I was imagining my neighbor Myriam completely shredding my family during assemby simply because she doesn´t agree that we should be eating cereal at breakfast, articulating a war while the other neighbors clap vigorously. As a matter of fact, Myriam doesn´t know what we eat at breakfast and it isn´t any of her business, at least not enough to make such a racket. I also know my example is extremely simple, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Just because in general, it really annoys me when people get into other people´s affairs with no invitation.

Mauricio Duque Arrubla [es] reads around the blogosphere to see what others have been saying about this conflict and wishes to clear things up a bit:

But it seems that for many foreigners, the problem in Colombia is if there is or isn´t a humanitarian agreement.

With all due respect to the hostages and their families, that is not the problem. There are many problems coming before the liberation of the hostages (the farc, the paramilitary groups, hunger, inequality, corruption). That doesn´t meen that we have to solve them in that order and that if we manage to get the hostages freed that would be even better news than this man´s death. [Raul Reyes, 2nd in command for the FARC]

But with concern I read that what many Europeans think is that with the dissappearance of this murderer, the agreement dissappears as well. ¿What about the rest? It doesn´t exist for them. And the bad guy always turns out to be the government, never the delinquents on the other end.



Sense of proportion has been completely lost.



PS. Even though the colombian government had reason enough to do what it did, it was wrongly done. The end doesn´t justify the means. But what happened was very good news, that I can´t deny. What seems to be coming can´t be too good, but we´ll have to see.



Víctor Solano [es] has taken to the task and built a timeline of the events that led to this conflict which has Colombians biting their nails. However, even more eye opening than the post itself, are the comments, where people are heatedly debating the timeline as well as the allegations of the 50 KG of Uranium that the FARC received aided by Venezuela. The source of this Uranium is one of the topics:



Camilo Andrés, copies political blogger Atrabilioso's 3 part report on the events on his blog [es] on his belief that the Uranium came from medical equipment theft:

Basically, the Uranium in the FARC´s hands came from radioactive materials used in medical equipment which during a misterious tide of thefts these power sources for clinical diagnoses were stolen a few years ago. The authorities, at the time, only managed to warn the general population regarding the health risks that being in contact with this element bring.

Carla Mariela [es] from Venezuela, provides another theory, that its source is Venezuela itself:

The note that most called my attention yesterday was that of the Uranium. I didn´t know about the medical equipment theft, but I did hear that for a few years now there have been land movements in the Venezuelan south in the area near Cerro Impacto. This mount has great concentrations of the mineral form of Uranium. Venezuela doesn´t export it officially and they officially don´t have the means to process it, but now this coincidence strikes me as quite serious.

On another comment, blogger Leonardo Benavides Gómez for Villa Noticias [es] tells that at the border with Venezuela at Villa del Rosario, cars with Colombian license plates are not being allowed to cross and that Venezuelan military personnel is patrolling the border. In his blog, he posts a picture of the military standing at their side of the Táchira river border.



In the political analysis blog Colombia Hoy [es], they have come to a conclusion: what originally seemed a plan to simply kill a terrorist leader became a means to unveil the political support the FARC has been receiving from other countries.

At a second glance, it becomes evident that the military operation had an ampler horizon. In fact, the destruction of the Reyes camp in Ecuadorian land sought to bring out into the light before the international community, first, the presence of the FARC in that country and second, to unveil the relations between the FARC and other governments in the region.

That was the strategic objective of the operation: to politically affect Chávez and Correa, and denounce their relation with the FARC.