RIGHTS: Mercenaries At Large in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Source: IPS News

RIGHTS: Mercenaries At Large in Colombia
By Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Dec 22 (IPS) - Mercenaries hired by private military and security companies are playing an increasingly broad range of roles in Latin America, such as guarding mines, borders, prisons, and now humanitarian aid, said the members of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries at a meeting in this Swiss city.

At the same time, some 3,000 Latin Americans, mainly Chileans, Peruvians, Colombians and Hondurans, are serving as mercenaries in conflict zones in Iraq.

Assistance provided by a commando made up of former Israeli military intelligence experts has also helped the Colombian government deal heavy blows to the left-wing guerrillas, said Amada Benavídes de Pérez from Colombia, one of the five members of the U.N. Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination.

The Working Group, created in 2005 by the U.N. Human Rights Commission (subsequently replaced by the U.N. Council on Human Rights), discussed the possibility of drawing up new international legal instruments to regulate the growing activities of private military and security companies, at their meeting last week.

The use of mercenaries contravenes the United Nations International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, which entered into force in 2001.


Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45198

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. Good find, Judi.

[balantz]

2. "...made up of former Israeli military intelligence experts..."

Would that be ex-Mossad, friends to CIA?

Interesting, thanks for the report.

[MisterP]

9. ugh, Israel's become what Pétainist/Klaus Barbie/ODESSA-fed Argentina

was in 1979-83: a huge supplier of "advisors" who only happen to be giving advice on how to do torture in swastika-draped rooms, butcher families, execute nuns, etc.

[balantz]

3. Let's see if this thread gets shuffled off. n/t

[acmavm]

4. I can just see these thugs as kids now, masturbating to their Soldier of

Fortune magazines...

[alfredo]

5. I wonder if Blacwater is there.

[truedelphi]

7. Don't know about Blackwater, but Dyncorp is there.

They are just as bad. Same game, different name.

[alfredo]

11. Forgot about them.

[antimatter98]

6. Eric Holder defends Chiquita Brands paying Columbian paramilitary

After President-Elect Obama revealed that Eric Holder would be his choice for attorney-general, several observers raised questions about the nominee’s role as a private lawyer defending Chiquita Brands, the U.S. fruit company. Holder helped Chiquita negotiate a plea agreement with the Justice Department for the years of payoffs that the company made to paramilitary groups in a part of Colombia where the right-wing militias massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians.

http://www.cipcol.org/?p=703

=========================

According to Mario Iguaran, the Attorney General of Colombia, Chiquita's payments to the AUC paramilitaries led to the murder of 4000 civilians in the banana region of Colombia and furthered the growth of the paramilitaries throughout Colombia and their violent takeover of numerous Colombian regions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/lawyer-for-chiquita-in-co_b_141919.html

=========================
Eric Holder: Obama's selection for AG.

[truedelphi]

8. It's looking more and more like the "Change" Obama

Was talking about is only an expression relating to what most of those who voted for him will
possess as their net worth.

[burrowowl]

10. Good find! K&R