BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) – A senior U. S. Department of Defense official had strong suspicions that then Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, now a space arrest, had a history of dealing with violent paramilitaries, according to a recently declassified memorandum from his early years. Office.
The document is part of a batch of documents shared with The Associated Press through the Nonprofit National Security File, which claims to be the first to show that considerations about Uribe’s potentially unpleasant ties to armed teams hired through landowners rich to them since the guerrilla war have arrived. the highest level of Pentagon Levels.
“Uribe almost actually had an appointment with the Paramilitaries (AUC) when he ruled Antioquia,” Peter Rodman, then a senior Pentagon congressman, wrote in a 2004 confidential office to Bush-era Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “Go with work. “”
The misiva adds to the suspicions, which Uribe vehemently denied, that the guy admitted to having been responsible for Colombia’s long war with Marxist fighters that he himself engaged with violent actors while running the province that included Medellin in the 1990s. Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym AUC, were declared a foreign terrorist organization across the United States in 2001.
The Supreme Court investigates allegations that Uribe insisted that former paramilitaries retract statements linking him to his militias in a case that has divided the country and tensions have surfaced over the Colombian peace process.
The documents do not include an express description of the direct interactions between the former president and the paramilitaries, and there is little to show whether or to what extent the United States attempted to find out whether or to what extent, but dozens of legislators, adding many of Uribe’s allies – have been imprisoned and convicted of links to paramilitaries, building a transparent link between politicians and illegal armed groups.
A Uribe spokesman said in a statement that “the only relationship between President Uribe and the paramilitaries was to put them in jail,” noting several cases in which senior U. S. officials praised their leadership and human rights trajectory.
“All movements taken to the highest levels of the U. S. government have shown that there is never any doubt about President Uribe’s integrity and commitment to human rights and the rule of law,” added lobbying group DCI Group. that the firm was hired to help the former president with the $40,000 song according to the month.
U. S. Embassy cables, CIA reports, and confidential notes were received through requests from the National Security Archives Research Institute of the Freedom of Information Act.
A behind-the-scenes look at the U. S. government’s reaction to the early years of Uribe’s presidency in 2002-2010 shows that officials are incredibly pleased with their competence to win over guerrilla teams involved in large-scale murders, kidnappings, and drug trafficking. These were the first years after September 11, and the administration of George W. Bush saw the defeat of Colombian rebels as a component of a larger counter-terrorism project around the world.
In a memo, a senior Pentagon official touted that Uribe’s army had killed 543 rebels with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and captured 1,063 more in the early part of 2003, a dramatic increase over its predecessor. Uribe’s pro-battlefield policy triumphs in the media.
Rumsfeld himself is eager to capture the moment to “strike a fatal blow to drug traffickers,” he wrote in a note providing topics of conversation to an MP.
“President Uribe has a few years left to accomplish this task,” he added.
But the firms also involve recurrent, not-so-subtle, evidence that the Colombian army, Uribe’s main allies, and the president himself, had made alliances with Colombia’s United Self-Defense Forces, the umbrella paramilitary group.
A 1997 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency noted that the army’s cooperation with the paramilitaries had “worsened” under General Rito Alejo del Río, who served as commander of Army Brigade 17 towards the end of Uribe’s tenure as governor. “They were never allowed to worry directly about encouraging or supporting paraarmy activities, yet they turned their backs on what was happening. “
Subsequently, Del Rio was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his involvement in the murder of a peasant leader.
One of the most revealing documents describing the brutality of the AUC comes from a 1997 embassy cable detailing a 90-minute verbal exchange with Jorge Alveiro Valencia, a dentist, rancher and conservative deputy, who said that of a hundred people killed in his district in recent years, 10 were guerrillas, another 10 active supporters and the rest were “unfortunate victims. “
He recounted a “punitive murder” in which the paramilitaries killed an elderly peasant and organized “funerals” for his head one day and for his body the next.
“That’s the only bad thing about paramilitaries,” he says, according to the cable, “they’re very ruthless and they’re chasing other people who don’t deserve it. “
Asked about Uribe, Valencia said he “hates the guerrillas” because his father was murdered – an accusation the rebels denied – and had ties to farm animal herders and local landowners who pay paramilitaries to “attack” the fighters.
But he also described Uribe as “clean and honest” and concerned about them.
Valencia added that paramilitaries “respect him for his anti-guerrilla stance. “
This admiration became clear when Valencia described his abduction by paramilitaries in 1996: the men tied his hands behind his back, put rifles to his head and threatened to kill him if he did not confess to being a collaborator of the guerrillas. his captors laughed and said they already had plenty of cash and weapons.
According to the cable, Valencia told embassy staff that what finally stored him were documents in his briefcase that seemed to know Uribe.
“Oh, you know The Elder, ” said his captors, referring to the nickname “The Elder. “
Like the curtains included in the 1,554-page court ruling on Uribe’s space arrest, there is no hard evidence linking Uribe to the paramilitaries, but a network of connections was eliminated in a single step. These documents also include references to Uribe as “The Elder”. .
The president remains twice as one of Colombia’s top political leaders; it is widely identified and respected by many for weakening the guerrillas to the point where they decided to negotiate peace, but their popularity has declined in recent years and a broader version of The Shock in Colombian Society has led to closer examination of their own potential role in human rights violations.
The Supreme Court called Uribe as part of an investigation into three massacres and the killing of a human rights activist as the investigation into the forgery of witnesses progressed.
Michael Evans, senior analyst for the National Security Archives, said there was no indication that Uribe’s alleged ties had an effect on U. S. aid to Colombia, which increased particularly during his presidency.
“Uribe’s alleged ties to a US-designated terrorist organization were far less than his functionality as president,” Evans said.
The Trump administration has shown its firmness for Uribe, and Vice President Mike Pence recently praised Uribe as a “hero” in a Twitter message asking Colombian officials to allow him to protect himself outside the limits of space arrest.
During the verbal exchange with Valence, landowner Uribe occasionally emerged, although embassy staff did not seem to ask about the main points of imaginable ties to the paramilitaries. Valencia, which has declared its admiration for Uribe, insinued oblique ties and denied Uribe’s involvement.
He described the paramilitaries as an inevitable, albeit terrible, result of a confrontation in which the Colombian armed forces did not or could not defeat the rebels themselves.
Landowners tired of threats, he said, see paramilitary recruitment as their alternative.
“Everyone pays,” he says.
＿
Associated Press Joshua Goodman contributed to the report.