Colombian activist waits in prison limbo

[AlphaCentauri]

Reporting from Corozal, Colombia -- Community organizer Carmelo Agamez has spent five months in jail and still has not seen the evidence against him, been told who his accuser is or been notified of a trial date. Welcome to justice, Colombia style.

Facing what he says is a laughable charge of consorting with right-wing paramilitary leaders, the lifelong socialist says he has been thrown arbitrarily into the maw of Colombian justice.


In a jailhouse interview in northern Sucre state, Agamez said the real reason he was arrested was that he was organizing displaced Afro-Colombians in the town of San Onofre. That angered powerful interests trying to assemble abandoned lands for cattle, lumber and oil-drilling projects, he said.

"I was bringing social help to people who were asserting claims for their land and this caught someone's attention," Agamez, who heads the local chapter of the National Movement of Victims of Crimes of State, said Monday. "People who didn't dare speak were starting to get rid of the fear they felt."

Colombian prosecutors did not respond to a request for an interview.


Colombian and U.S. human rights organizations have rallied around the 60-year-old activist, saying he is an example of how community leaders here are sometimes jailed and charged with "rebellion" or "paramilitarism" to discredit them and intimidate others.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colombia-leftist2-2009apr02,0,3559772.story

[Peace Patriot]

1. "Welcome to justice, Colombia style"???? Gee, who else has jailed political opponents,

used the justice system to punish dissent, detained prisoners without trial, tortured thousands, murdered tens of thousands, in a frenzy of power-mad greed?

Why, the very government that gives Colombia $6 BILLION in military aid to do the same! US!

This unfriggingbelievable BLIND SPOT at the L.A. Times, and throughout the U.S. corpo/fascist press, and its deafeningly hypocritical echo in the halls of Congress, leads to mindbogglingly twisted statements like the following:

"'One of the most serious weaknesses of highly regarded and successful Democratic security policy has been its systematic neglect of key elements of the rule of law and Uribe's apparent disdain for human rights organizations in general,' said Bruce Bagley, a political scientist and Colombia expert at the University of Miami. 'The Carmelo Agamez case raises these issues.'"

Read that statement again, carefully, and tell me that our political establishment has not gone insane.