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On Thursday, November 14, 2002, at 12:29 AM, Michael Pugliese wrote:
> 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."
>
>