Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Investigation called for Bush’s AUC terrorist group

Bush is considering how to support the government of Colombia's efforts to demobilize the AUC with taxpayer money even though Colin Powell declared the AUC a terrorist organization on September 10, 2001, and in spite of the fact that Castaño, former leader of the AUC, now in Israel is wanted for extradition to the US on charges of cocaine trafficking.

The US has covertly supported the overthrow of Hugo Chavez to that end it is expected that Colombia will send troops at US insistence, possibly alongside US marines or Special Forces, or AUC units replete with Colombian soldiers.

Bush wants Chavez out, the AUC is one of the means mentioned to take Chavez out and Bush would like the AUC, terrorist organization par excellence, to be supported by US taxpayers.
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The Police Commandos are in large part the brainchild of another US counter-insurgency veteran, Steven Casteel, a former top DEA man who has been acting as the senior advisor in the Ministry of the Interior. Casteel was involved in the hunt for Colombia’s notorious cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, during which the DEA collaborated with a paramilitary organization known as Los Pepes, which later transformed itself into the AUC, an umbrella organization covering all of Colombia’s paramilitary death squads. (http://cocaine.org/colombia/pablo-escobar.html ; http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/040105isac.htm ).

-Am

Colombia: Group wants AUC investigation
By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published June 29, 2005


BOGOTA, Colombia -- Human rights activists are calling for an investigation into alleged abuses by Colombia's paramilitaries.

The right-wing soldiers committed 2,000 individual human rights violations since 2002, asserts the International Federation of Human Rights, EL Tiempo reported Wednesday in its online edition.


The IFHR wants the International Criminal Court to investigate the abuse charges.

Colombian civilians are often caught in battles between leftist rebels the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, a war that leaves an estimated 3,500 dead a year.

The Colombian government is currently negotiating a disarmament treaty with the AUC that critics say is too lenient and lets those who have committed countless killings and rights violations go free.



http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050629-033304-3277r