Colombian Militia Boss: We Burned Hundreds of Bodies

[rabs]

Another horror story out of Colombia; the first mention I have seen of crematoria set up by rightwing paramilitaries (who have been linked to President Uribe) to burn the bodies of their victims. The irony is that today Uribe met with the pope, the former Hitler Youth pontiff, in Rome.

-------------------

Mancuso said the burning of the bodies “was a favor that (now-deceased AUC founder) Carlos Castaño was doing for the authorities.”

He said the decision came after a meeting where politicians, senior military officers and other notables asked the AUC to dispose of victims’ bodies as a way of holding down the number of deaths that could be attributed to the militias.

That discussion took place at a time when evidence of militia massacres was coming to light, according to Mancuso, who said the militias dug up their buried victims and cremated them in ovens set up near the Venezuelan border.

Another former AUC member, Jorge Ivan Laverde, testified last October that the first of the ovens was built in 2001 in Norte de Santander province to incinerate 98 bodies.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=333321&CategoryId=12393

edited for typo

[Judi Lynn]

1. Fantastic seeing a corporate source actually PRINTING this information, rabs!

Chainsaw massacres, torturing and slaughtering entire villages, and now killing so many they have to burn them, just to keep the human rights people from knowing what they've done. What a crowd of monsters.

Rabs, this story should also be posted in LBN, as this testimony was made in Washington, since he's (Salvatore Mancuso) here in prison. I know there are some very decent people who'd be so interested to see it who may not have the time to come to the Latin America forum.

After posting the headline in LBN, you are allowed to put a clarification, etc. in parentheses, and posting this headline with (Washington testimony) immediately after it would be self-explanitory to a moderator, and I'm sure they'd allow it to stay in LBN.

This is phenomenal. We should make a pool to guess if ANY corporate US paper will publish this. This is an enormous story.

[rabs]

3. A paramilitary primer on how to dismember people

Sorry did not see yr post of last night. But see you inserted Intl. Trib. article on another thread in LBN. Good.

--------------------

Here is an email I got yesterday from our Colombian friend from the CNN days. He gets his information directly from his friends and family in Colombia.

First, a little background: Francisco Villalba, a former paramilitary, was convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison for his role in campesino massacres at Ituango and El Aro. In testimony he gave at his trial, he stated that Alvaro Uribe had been implicated in the El Aro massacre and described in detail how paramilitary recurits were taught how to kill people -- by killing real people.

Three weeks ago, Villalba was shot to death in Medellin. It has not been explained why he was free in his home city when he had been sentenced to 33 years in a maximum-security prison in Bogota. Suspicion is that he was ordered released by the Uribe government and eliminated so he could not provide any more information on paramilitary crimes. Translation is by our friend. "Lesa humanity" means "crimes against humanity."

----------------------------------------
The following article, is a real tale of horror, a macabre relate about how the narco-paramilitaries in Colombia trained their people. It is not a secret in Colombia the friendly link and high level of collaboration existing between the bloodthirsty paramilitaries and Alvaro Uribe's government.

Mostly those crimes against the humanity happened during the Alvaro Uribe´s regime since he was Governor of Antioquia in the 90´s and the bathblood has continued without interruption during his 7 years as President.



'Bravery' tests. This is the words used for the paramilitaries to describe the trainings that they imparted to their recruits so they could learn how to dismember alive people. Initially, the authorities distrusted the versions of peasants that denounced this practice and they attributed to these teachings the disappearing of people. But when the own paramilitaries began to admit it in their declaration before the General Prosecutor Office, the myth became awfully real, a sadistic crime of " lesa humanity".

Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernandez (aka ' Cristian Barreto'), one of the authors of the massacre of Ituango and El Aro in Antioquia, received this type of training in the same place in which he learned manage weapons and to manufacture homemade bombs. Today, prisoner in the jail La Picota of Bogotá, Villalba has described detailed, during long interrogations about how he applied this instruction.

"By the middle of 1994 they sent me to a training in the farm "The 35", in El Tomato, Antioquia, where it was located the main field of instruction", he says in his story to the Attorney General Office. In the farm, the "working" day began to 5 in the morning and the instructions that he had to carry out was coming directly from top paramilitaries commander, as ' Double cero' (Carlos Garcia, murdered by another paramilitaries of the Cacique Nutibara, a rival group).

Showing a diabolical coldblood, Villalba described the teachings of cutting in pieces alive persons, usually poor and innocent peasants that paramilitaries captured during the take over of neighboring peasant towns. "They were old people (men and women) that took them in trucks, alive, tied", he describes. The victims arrived to the farm in covered trucks. They got them off the vehicle with the tied hands and paramilitaries took them to a room. There, the victims remained several days awaiting that the training began.

"Now it's ready to start the instruction": Paramilitaries distributed the victims in four or five groups and there they dismembered them", Villalba says in the inquest. "The instructor told to paramilitary prospects: “You stop here and so-and-so there. He gives support to the novices that are learning to cut an alive human body. This is important, because whenever paramilitaries takes a town and they decide to cut in pieces somebody, it is necessary to offer top support to those that are making that work."

The victims, women and the men, were kept in small dirty rooms and when the new roocky paramilitaries arrived, then the victims were taken out in underwear with hands tied. Then the commanders took them to the place where the instructors waited to begin the first recommendations:

"The instructions were to mutilate first an arm, after a leg and lately the head. They came out crying and begging that we don't hurt them because they had family."

Villalba describes the process: "They were opened alive from the chest until the belly to take out the guts and viscera. They were removed legs, arms and head with machete or with knife. The viscera should be removed with the hand. The prospects in instruction had to do it themselves.

The training demanded it, according to him, to prove the anger and to learn how to disappear to the person." During the month and half that Francisco Villalba says that it remained in the course, he participated several times dismembering people.

"They choice the paramilitary prospects ready to participate in the training. One time, one of the "students" refused to participate. Immediately paramilitary commander ' Double cero' stand up and told him: ' Bring me the machete, I'm able to do it". Then he dismembered the prospect as a lesson for the rest. Paramilitary commanders ordered to me to mutilate the arm of a young woman. Then the Commander removed the head and a leg of her. Previously, she had begged for her life asking them not to kill her because she had two little children."

It was normal that many times the instructors cut the yugular of the victims, picking the blood in small bowls and giving to drink to the new paramilitaries.

The bodies were taken there to graves inside the farm The 35, where according the Attorney General, paramilitaries buried more than 800 corpses in small pieces.

"They were old and young people that took in trucks, tied. The instruction was to remove arms, head, legs. The order was to dismember them alive."

(Related by Francisco Villalba, in a questioning procedure before the Attorney General in Colombia)

ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE COLOMBIAN NEWSPAPER EL TIEMPO ON APRIL 21/07.

-----
Graves in ponds and wells, filled up with crocodiles and caimans_
At the end of last year, an informant contacted to a group of investigators to narrate him how before Alvaro Uribe pushes the approval of the Law of Justice and Peace, several paramilitaries commanders of Cordoba and Sucre began to make, in some of their properties, artificial ponds, supposedly for breeding of fish. According to the informant, people of the area told to the engineers building the ponds that they were contributing to the concealment of graves. " It's just a supposition, an investigator says but we will have to dry a couple of those ponds to see what we find". Such fact, it would explain why in farms as The Palmar, a well-known pond of paramilitary extermination -field in the State of Sucre - there were full of caimans and crocodile. In this respect, Ivan Cepeda, investigator of human right violations, assures in one of his writings that witnesses have manifested him that crocodiles devoured several cadavers. The same version circulates in Mompox regarding the ponds of a property of ' Chepe Barrera', another paramilitary.

[Judi Lynn]

4. rabs, nothing against any single person in concentration camps was every more cruel

than what happens to people at the hands of these evil death squad people.

It is overwhelming just seeing the words. I'm so glad you shared his remarks. He didn't leave that country for no reason.

I won't ever forget this testimony. I have read an article which described very similar events, with less detail, more removed, as if the participant really couldn't bring himself to state exactly what had happened, but I have never heard it explained so well I understood it.

It must be they are attempting to frighten any onlookers or people who will hear about it so they will flee like all the displaced people roaming that part of the world, with no home at all. Second largest displaced population in the world, next to Sudan.

I start to see the word "disappeared" in a whole new light, rabs. It would be so much easier for them following the procedure you and N.A. related. Simply amazing. That was the purpose of the ovens in Europe, to enable them to destroy large numbers of people and leave no evidence.

Ponds, man-made lakes stocked with really carnivorous creatures. I will never forget this. There's no way they'll be able to reclaim the remains of tons of people now. Not after this.

Thank you for taking the time to write this here. People need to know what has happened, even IF the bloodthirsty monsters try to keep it all under their control and hushed up. The day will come they will realize they actually are NOT the masters of their fate. They will run out of sanctuary sometime.

There is so much to think about concerning how things could get like that, when they take young men and force them into bondage doing their murdering and torturing in fear they will be murdered themselves. Unbearably horrible. I really appreciate your considerate sharing.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Whoops. Just noticed my message line. Was rushing too fast. Embarrassing.

I tried to convey the idea that nothing in any concentration camp could have been more heartless than cutting apart a living person. That was my actual destination when I wrote that subject line.

[rabs]

6. you had me scratching my head ...

:)

[Bacchus39]

7. how about burning someone alive???

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=94038

[Peace Patriot]

2. Bush's "medal of freedom" buds in Colombia were trying to match Bushwhack evil?

"...Mancuso...said the militias dug up their buried victims and cremated them in ovens set up near the Venezuelan border.

"Another former AUC member, Jorge Ivan Laverde, testified last October that the first of the ovens was built in 2001 in Norte de Santander province to incinerate 98 bodies."

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=333321&CategoryId=12393

-----

The Bushwhacks started torturing, murdering, renditioning, spying and passing multiple tax cuts for rich--not to mention ignoring patsy terrorists running around all over the US getting flight lessons and lapdances--that same year. They were simultaneously pouring $6 BILLION into the Colombia military who, together with their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads, were committing these atrocities in Colombia. They were also, at the same time, plotting to overthrow democracy in Venezuela and kill its president, Hugo Chavez (the coup that the people of Venezuela defeated in 2002--arguably the most important event in modern Latin American history). I challenged a "know-nothing" DUer the other day, who said that Chavez had to learn to "behave" in order to merit a handshake from the President of the U.S. When I asked him what he meant, he said Chavez calling Bush "the Devil" at the UN. Chavez's remark becomes more and more right-on, the more we learn about Bushwhacks and their pals in Colombia. The smell of sulfur, indeed. One wonders how the Bushwhacks got rid of their numerous' disappeareds.' Of course their main carnage was right out in the open--a hundred thousand innocent people bombed into oblivion, to steal their oil. This awesome blind spot in the corpo/fascist 'news' continues to amaze me. We should talking about almost nothing else in our national political dialogue. Yet it is treated as if it didn't happen. I don't know what is more evil--this blood-drenched greed and genocidal theft, or the deliberate forgetting of it.