Post by RPankn on Apr 28, 2004 4:22:40 GMT -5
[Your American tax dollars at work:]
Colombian cab driver reveals corruption in AG office
By FRANCES ROBLES
Miami Herald
BOGOTA, Colombia - Juan Carlos Cano has spent the past year hiding, ducking suspicious cars and steering clear of his old neighborhood in Colombia, where paramilitary gunmen may be looking for him.
But the 22-year-old taxi driver recently showed his face to the entire nation, telling Congress that he witnessed two investigators for the Colombian attorney general's office help murder and mutilate people suspected to be leftist guerrillas.
According to Cano, the investigators helped the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, an outlawed paramilitary group known as AUC, ``disappear people'' after the army and police swept into his guerrilla-dominated neighborhood in late 2002.
At least 45 of his neighbors haven't been seen since.
``You know how many mothers are crying because their sons are dead in the mountains?'' he said in an interview with The Miami Herald.
Cano's declaration was the latest stain on the attorney general's office, long accused of sympathizing with the AUC, which has committed scores of atrocities in its fight against leftist guerrillas. It was the strongest of a series of charges that investigators and prosecutors secretly partake in the very crimes they investigate.
Cano was a cab driver in Comuna 13, a hillside slum in the city of Medellin that was long run by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a leftist guerrilla force known as FARC.
According to a report by the government's human rights ombudsman, the People's Defender's Office, Cano was often forced to transport FARC members in the neighborhood.
In a military offensive that was a cornerstone of his government, President Alvaro Uribe ordered Colombian security forces to expel the rebels with ``Operation Orion'' in the fall of 2002.
And while everyone agrees that the campaign drove the FARC out of Comuna 13, human-rights activists say its residents now serve a different master: the AUC.
The AUC started out 20 years ago with groups of ranchers banding together to fight back against FARC extortions and kidnappings. Over the years, it won a fearsome reputation for massacres, sometimes with help from the military and police.
Cano said that after Operation Orion, he was detained by security forces and held for two weeks. After his release, he and four other men from his neighborhood were detained again by five AUC members and two agents from the CTI, an investigative unit of the attorney general's office.
They knew his face, he said, from the mug shots taken during his first arrest.
They drove through the city, riding past police roadblocks. Cano said they stopped in a mountainous area, where the men began to beat their captives. The CTI agents, Cano said, didn't hurt him but appeared to supervise the others.
First they put the gun to Cano's genitals, he told Congress. Then his mouth. One man fired beside his ear, just for fun.
Then they fired in earnest - and bickered when they realized that no one had brought a machete, he said.
``You mean we have to bury these people whole?'' Cano said he recalled hearing as he played dead while the others were murdered.
Cano said he broke away when the men turned to cut up the others with knives. He was chased, shot in the neck and hip, but got away by hiding in a marsh, he said.
He took cover first in a hospital and then with friends. After eight days, Cano disguised himself as a homeless man and filed a complaint with the People's Defender's Office. He spent the next year in hiding.
But last month, Catholic Church human-rights activists took Cano to Congressman Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerrilla who frequently denounces Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio.
In a recent congressional debate, Petro used a large-screen television to show a video of Cano telling his story. In case anyone doubted him, Cano sat in the audience.
``More of Petro's lies,'' Osorio was quoted saying the next day in a Bogota newspaper.
A spokeswoman for Osorio's office said she had no information on Cano's charges, because he does not appear to have filed a report directly with the attorney general's office.
``I am telling a pile of lies so I can be killed?'' Cano said. ``Who does that? A nut.''
The People's Defender's Office confirmed it was helping Cano but refused to give further details. Carmen Maria Lazo, head of the Ministry of Interior's witness protection program, confirmed that her office offered Cano protection for several months.
The Organization of American States' Interamerican Commission on Human Rights visited Comuna 13 in 2003 and reported receiving many allegations of selective killings and forced disappearances after Operation Orion.
According to Petro, the human rights ombudsman's office followed a map that Cano drew and found a mass grave that included the body of one of the four men picked up with him.
``Everything he said has been proved,'' Petro said. ``But the attorney general has not launched a judicial investigation into his complaint. Instead they insult me, when the things that happened to Cano bury the government's version of what happened in Comuna 13.''
Petro said 47 people are still missing, and nobody is doing much to find them.
Cano has since changed his appearance and is trying to leave the country.
``The truth is, I'm an honest worker, and I have seen people chopped in pieces,'' he told The Miami Herald. ``I am clear on the risk, and clear I may not live long. If God made me the only survivor, I have to do something.
``My death will not be in vain.''
Link: www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/world/8524217.htm
Colombian cab driver reveals corruption in AG office
By FRANCES ROBLES
Miami Herald
BOGOTA, Colombia - Juan Carlos Cano has spent the past year hiding, ducking suspicious cars and steering clear of his old neighborhood in Colombia, where paramilitary gunmen may be looking for him.
But the 22-year-old taxi driver recently showed his face to the entire nation, telling Congress that he witnessed two investigators for the Colombian attorney general's office help murder and mutilate people suspected to be leftist guerrillas.
According to Cano, the investigators helped the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, an outlawed paramilitary group known as AUC, ``disappear people'' after the army and police swept into his guerrilla-dominated neighborhood in late 2002.
At least 45 of his neighbors haven't been seen since.
``You know how many mothers are crying because their sons are dead in the mountains?'' he said in an interview with The Miami Herald.
Cano's declaration was the latest stain on the attorney general's office, long accused of sympathizing with the AUC, which has committed scores of atrocities in its fight against leftist guerrillas. It was the strongest of a series of charges that investigators and prosecutors secretly partake in the very crimes they investigate.
Cano was a cab driver in Comuna 13, a hillside slum in the city of Medellin that was long run by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a leftist guerrilla force known as FARC.
According to a report by the government's human rights ombudsman, the People's Defender's Office, Cano was often forced to transport FARC members in the neighborhood.
In a military offensive that was a cornerstone of his government, President Alvaro Uribe ordered Colombian security forces to expel the rebels with ``Operation Orion'' in the fall of 2002.
And while everyone agrees that the campaign drove the FARC out of Comuna 13, human-rights activists say its residents now serve a different master: the AUC.
The AUC started out 20 years ago with groups of ranchers banding together to fight back against FARC extortions and kidnappings. Over the years, it won a fearsome reputation for massacres, sometimes with help from the military and police.
Cano said that after Operation Orion, he was detained by security forces and held for two weeks. After his release, he and four other men from his neighborhood were detained again by five AUC members and two agents from the CTI, an investigative unit of the attorney general's office.
They knew his face, he said, from the mug shots taken during his first arrest.
They drove through the city, riding past police roadblocks. Cano said they stopped in a mountainous area, where the men began to beat their captives. The CTI agents, Cano said, didn't hurt him but appeared to supervise the others.
First they put the gun to Cano's genitals, he told Congress. Then his mouth. One man fired beside his ear, just for fun.
Then they fired in earnest - and bickered when they realized that no one had brought a machete, he said.
``You mean we have to bury these people whole?'' Cano said he recalled hearing as he played dead while the others were murdered.
Cano said he broke away when the men turned to cut up the others with knives. He was chased, shot in the neck and hip, but got away by hiding in a marsh, he said.
He took cover first in a hospital and then with friends. After eight days, Cano disguised himself as a homeless man and filed a complaint with the People's Defender's Office. He spent the next year in hiding.
But last month, Catholic Church human-rights activists took Cano to Congressman Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerrilla who frequently denounces Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio.
In a recent congressional debate, Petro used a large-screen television to show a video of Cano telling his story. In case anyone doubted him, Cano sat in the audience.
``More of Petro's lies,'' Osorio was quoted saying the next day in a Bogota newspaper.
A spokeswoman for Osorio's office said she had no information on Cano's charges, because he does not appear to have filed a report directly with the attorney general's office.
``I am telling a pile of lies so I can be killed?'' Cano said. ``Who does that? A nut.''
The People's Defender's Office confirmed it was helping Cano but refused to give further details. Carmen Maria Lazo, head of the Ministry of Interior's witness protection program, confirmed that her office offered Cano protection for several months.
The Organization of American States' Interamerican Commission on Human Rights visited Comuna 13 in 2003 and reported receiving many allegations of selective killings and forced disappearances after Operation Orion.
According to Petro, the human rights ombudsman's office followed a map that Cano drew and found a mass grave that included the body of one of the four men picked up with him.
``Everything he said has been proved,'' Petro said. ``But the attorney general has not launched a judicial investigation into his complaint. Instead they insult me, when the things that happened to Cano bury the government's version of what happened in Comuna 13.''
Petro said 47 people are still missing, and nobody is doing much to find them.
Cano has since changed his appearance and is trying to leave the country.
``The truth is, I'm an honest worker, and I have seen people chopped in pieces,'' he told The Miami Herald. ``I am clear on the risk, and clear I may not live long. If God made me the only survivor, I have to do something.
``My death will not be in vain.''
Link: www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/world/8524217.htm