US indicts FARC

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Wed Nov 13 22:29:33 PST 2002


Briceno was responsible for killing a graduate of UCSC, Terry Freitas, which pissed off alot of folks I knew from CISPES and its periphery in Santa Cruz. A newish book I was glancing at on Columbia from the La Violencia period forward had an interesting appendix. Open Letter circa early 90's from leading figures of the Columbiuan left including Gabriel Garcia Marquez pleading w/FARC to negotiate seriously. Michael Pugliese

http://www.colombiasupport.net/199903/hostageskilled.html

The far right paramilitary AUC head Castano was also just indicted. http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/drugs/02092401.htm http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/colombia_09-25-02.html Feds Bust Colombians in Drugs-For-Guns Deal Wed Nov 6, 3:42 PM ET http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20021106/ts_nm/crime_drugs_colombia_dc By Deborah Charles

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) announced Wednesday the arrest of four members of a far-right Colombian paramilitary group on charges of being involved in a $25 million drugs-for- weapons plot. Ashcroft said two high-ranking members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC -- Cesar Lopez or Commandant Napo and a man known as Commandant Emilio -- were arrested on Tuesday in Costa Rica while finalizing a deal to sell cocaine for weapons.

Officials in Costa Rica also arrested Carlos Ali Romero Varela, of Houston, Texas. The process to extradite the three men to the United States is under way.

A fourth man, Uwe Jensen, was arrested in Houston on Tuesday and charged with being involved in the same plot.

All four men were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, they face sentences of up to life in prison.

Classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, the AUC is Colombia's second-largest illegal army. According to the Colombian police, the AUC has conducted more than 800 assassinations, more than 200 kidnappings and 75 massacres with 507 victims in the first 10 months of 2000.

"Terrorism and drug trafficking thrive in the same conditions," Ashcroft said in announcing the arrests. "They feed off of each other. They support each other."

OPERATION WHITE TERROR

The arrests were made following a 13 month investigation code-named "Operation White Terror" carried out by agents from the FBI (news - web sites) and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed in Houston, Romero and Jensen arranged with an undercover law enforcement officer to buy five shipping containers full of Russian- and Eastern European-made weaponry for the AUC. The payment was to be made with cocaine.

The weapons the defendants are charged with attempting to acquire include shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles; 53 million rounds of various types of ammunition; 9,000 assault rifles, including AK-47s, sniper rifles and submachine guns, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, grenades and pistols.

Noting that AUC leader Carlos Castano and two other AUC leaders had been indicted in Washington last month, DEA director Asa Hutchinson applauded the outcome of Operation White Terror and other efforts to break up narco- terrorism.

"The Colombian terrorists who were arrested yesterday in this multimillion dollar cocaine-for-arms deal is yet another example of the convergence of violence and terrorism with drug trafficking," he said.

"We have learned and we have demonstrated that drug traffickers and terrorists work out of the same jungle, they plan out of the same cave and they train in the same desert."



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