WP: Colombian Unravels Government-Paramilitary Ties Imprisoned Ex-Official Is Central Witness

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031901973.html

Colombian Unravels Government-Paramilitary Ties
Imprisoned Ex-Official Is Central Witness in Scandal Shaking U.S. Ally

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 20, 2007; Page A16

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 19 -- Sitting in a dreary 7-by-5-foot cell, Rafael Garc?a predicts that he'll soon be murdered. It's a common threat in one of Colombia's toughest prisons, but it's made all the more real for the uncommon prisoner.

Garc?a is a star witness for prosecutors, revealing secret links between Colombian officials and right-wing paramilitary groups. His testimony has helped trigger the biggest political scandal faced yet by the government of President ?lvaro Uribe, the Bush administration's closest ally in Latin America and recipient of more than $4 billion in American aid.

Once a high-level official in the government's intelligence agency, Garc?a has outlined for investigators how the intelligence chief, Jorge Noguera, funneled classified documents to paramilitary commanders, and how those commanders rigged elections to place their allies in Congress, giving an organization designated a terrorist group by the State Department unprecedented influence in government.

Along with secret paramilitary documents and other witness testimony, the information provided by Garc?a has led to the arrests of Noguera, eight congressmen and the governor of Magdalena state, Trino Luna. Another 15 current and former congressmen, as well as other local officials and military officers, are under investigation.


Rafael Garcia in 2004 (Family Photo)

Garc?a is serving an 11-year prison sentence for money-laundering, conspiracy, and falsifying and destroying documents.

Despite the information he has furnished investigators, Garc?a said in an interview Saturday that authorities have denied his frequent petitions to be placed in a witness protection program. Already, a handful of mid-level paramilitary commanders with deep knowledge about the paramilitary structure have been murdered.


FULL story at link.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Noguera revealed that there was a plot of assassinate Hugo Chavez among these

fascist paramilitaries, and to assassinate leaders/destabilize other countries as well (probably the Andean democracies--Bolivia, Ecuador, possibly Argentina--where leftists have also been elected in a rather amazing democracy movement that is sweeping Latin America). I think it's only a matter of time before these activities in Colombia in the top echelons of the government--drug trafficking, mass murder of leftists and peasants and political assassination plots are linked to our own Junta. It's the sort of thing they do. It's how they see the world--as one big arms deal for killing off democracy. They not only larded $4 billion of our tax dollars on the worst government in South America, Bush appointed John "Death Squad" Negroponte as Asst Sec of State for Latin American affairs--a sign of their intentions.

You gotta be worried about the "handful of mid-level paramilitary commanders with deep knowledge about the paramilitary structure" that "have been murdered." Were they the ones who knew the Bush Junta connections? But it appears to me that Latin American leaders have drawn a line in the sand, with the plots against Chavez, in an extraordinary assertion of Latin American independence and self-determination, inspired by some of the ideas of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution, to fend off this kind of interference. Even the rightwing president of Mexico felt compelled to lecture Bush to his face, in public, about the sovereignty of Latin American countries, using Venezuela as a example--on Bush's recent tour. And an AP reporter noted that Bush never mentioned Chavez's name. I think that was CONDITION of his visit, laid down by Latin American leaders: no Chavez bashing.