SOCIALIST UNITY

By Francisco Dominguez
Secretary Venezuela Solidarity Campaign

The already bad relations between Venezuela and Colombia took a turn for the worse after the accusations made by the outgoing Uribe government’s OAS representative, Luis Hoyos, who charged the Venezuelan government with harbouring Colombian guerrillas (1,500) and allowing guerrilla camps (85) inside its territory. The “evidence” - which has been pretty discredited - for this batch of accusations -as with previous ones- also came from the eight ‘magical laptops’ seized by Colombian military forces in an illegal military attack in March 1, 2009.

Chavez reacted by breaking off relations with Colombia, leading to a further worsening of the relations between the two nations, but sent his foreign minister to attend Santos’ inauguration anyway. Uribe’s response was to announce that his government was lodging a formal accusation against Venezuela in the Inter-American Committee of Human Rights and another formal charge against President Chavez personally to the International Criminal Court, one day before Juan Manuel Santos inauguration. Furthermore, Uribe, reportedly, announced he would be prepared to testify to the ICC against Hugo Chavez.

However, after intense diplomatic activity undertaken by UNASUR, Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s Foreign Relations Minister, Nestor Kirchner, UNASUR’s President, and Brazils’ President, Lula, the latter two very publicly meeting with both Hugo Chavez and Juan Manuel Santos at various separate meetings, managed, in a matter of few days, to turn what looked like an inexorable slide to disaster, into one of the most extraordinary political turnarounds from the brink in recent Latin American history. (more…)

One of the benefits of the Internet is that is can allow you to follow political arguments that you don’t necessarily agree with, but that are interesting and you would not normally be exposed to. One rewarding blog to watch is Mike Ely’s Kasama, who recently published the following article about the FARC-EP insurgency in Colombia by Nicholas DeFilippis. I am not endorsing the views of the article, but it is worthy of serious consideration.

In the jungles of Colombia, hidden from the eyes of the first world, the class struggle rages on a scale unknown to many 21^st Century political activists. It is a struggle of the disenfranchised and downtrodden against the ruling elites of their native land and the United States. I’m talking, of course, about the old, hardened, and ongoing guerrilla struggle of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, or FARC-EP (sometimes they’re simply called FARC).

Formed on May 27, 1964, the FARC-EP succeeded the rural self-defense groups originally formed by the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) to protect peasant communities from attacks by liberal and conservative government forces. Since then, the USA has backed military operations against the communist forces and continues to do so today (Brittain, 8). The mainstream media attacks on the FARC-EP are well known. We have all heard the stories about how they are a “narco-terrorist” organization void of any political and ideological content. In recent years we have even heard that the guerrillas are on the verge of defeat. We must wonder, as any informed citizen should, if these claims are true. Starting with the accusations of being big, bad drug dealers, moving on to accusations of terrorism, popular support, supposed military weakening, and finally politics and culture I will examine whether or not what we have been told about the FARC-EP is true. (more…)

From Xinhua

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Thursday that his country breaks off the diplomatic relations with Colombia.

“For dignity we do not have other option but to sever diplomatic ties with Colombia,” Chavez said after Colombia presented to the Organization of American States (OAS) the accusations about the alleged presence of Colombian guerrilla chiefs in Venezuelan territory.

At the moment of the announcement, Chavez had a meeting with Argentine soccer coach and former player Diego Maradona, at the Miraflores Palace, headquarters of the Venezuelan government.

With this measure, it was fulfilled the announcement made by Chavez on July 16 about severing ties with Colombia. Chavez regretted the measure due to the historical ties between the two countries, as they share a border line of 2,120 kilometers.

“We will be on alert, I have ordered maximum alert in our border,” Chavez said. He added that Colombia is obeying the United States and warned about the risk that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe goes for launching a military raid at the border.

Chavez added that Uribe is able to do anything to promote a conflict against Venezuela.

“Uribe is a threat for peace. He is even able to establish a faked camp in our territory and raid it to start a war,” Chavez said. (more…)

Camilo Torres: Prayer Can’t Solve Poverty Alone

Council on Hemispheric Affairs
This analysis was prepared by COHA Researcher Carolina Farias

There is always someone who is trying to improve society and seek better living standards by challenging the status quo, promoting freedom, and believing that social conditions can really be changed. Camilo Torres Restrepo, dubbed the “revolutionary priest” by his followers, struggled throughout his life to translate the canons of Liberation Theology into action. The second Vatican Council established the germs of Liberation Theology’s ideas in 1962. Through this framework, Camilo Torres proposed a political, social and economic paradigm shift, which in 1965 served to inspire the emergence of the National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian left-wing guerrilla group. Soon after the ELN was founded, Torres joined it and became its political face.

Born in 1929 in Bogotá, Torres’ extraordinary intelligence and academic preparation were catalyzed in part by his prominent family’s origins and access to education. He lived with his parents Calixto Torres Umaña and Isabel Restrepo Gaviria in Europe between 1931 and 1934. After they divorced, he returned to Colombia with his mother and finished his studies. Soon after graduating, Torres took his vows and joined the Roman Catholic Church as a priest in 1954.

Once he was ordained, Torres was sent to Belgium’s Pontifical Catholic University of Leuven, where he wrote his thesis, “The proletarian Tendencies in Bogotá”, which was published posthumously in Colombia in 1987. Afterwards, Torres started on his intensive academic research and produced studies about Colombia’s complex social situation, including surveys of urbanization, living standards, land reform, political violence and democracy. Torres’ emphasis on social development in Bogotá led him to become engaged in a number of academic projects in the Tunjuelito neighborhood, one of the poorest in the capital city.

By 1959, Torres had joined the National University of Colombia, where he co-founded the sociology faculty with Orlando Fals Borda, a notable researcher, academic, and sociologist, who at this time was very popular in the social sciences. Besides his intelligence, Torres’ charming personality as a professor as well as in his relations with students, transformed him into an instant leader committed to creating a good society, whether it was at the National University of Colombia, in the Catholic Church, or among the greater community.

The “revolutionary priest”, as he came to be known, was unique for his time, because he encouraged poor people to reflect on the origins of poverty and then refuse to accept their condition as God-given. As Torres was to preach, “People don’t happen to be poor; their poverty is largely a product of the way society is organized.” Subsequently, Torres started to promulgate political activism among students, peasants, and slum dwellers.

As a predecessor of the blooming of Liberation Theology, Torres tirelessly spread its tenets. The preferential “Option for the poor” projected the church as a social and political institution and proposed that bishops become analysts concerning social issues. Within Colombia, the prominence of Liberation Theology became widespread, as numerous religious organizations began examining the social, economic and political structures sustaining poverty. The movement, however, prompted opposition from some of the more powerful divisions of the Catholic Church, particularly among the upper hierarchies.

Liberation Theology was strongly criticized at the time by Cardinal Luis Concha of Bogotá, premiere of the Colombian Church, who argued that the “new spring time”, as he called the reform, would cause the erosion of Catholic values and the loss of influence of the Church in the western world. In this debate, Cardinal Concha and Camilo Torres were always antagonists. This was most noticeable in September of 1964, when Torres returned to Leuven to attend the Episcopal Theology Congress. During the meeting, he declared that Christians should cooperate with Marxists because they were both seeking change within social structures, not exclusively by praying, but also as a result of providing support to poor and laboring people.

Consequently, Camilo Torres gradually moved from academic studies within the pale of the Catholic Church, into political activism. He employed his previous intellectual investigations to address the violence found in Colombia’s rural territories, and then helped in the founding of the country’s trade union and various socialist movements. While Torres traveled around the city of Santander teaching and spreading his vision through political speeches, he was surrounded by peasants, workers and students. At the same time, he was developing contacts with the leftist guerilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN). In July 1965, he traveled to Santander for a meeting with Fabio Vasquez Castaño, ELN’s commander-in-chief.

After this meeting, Torres became linked to the ELN as a political figure spreading a combination of his own revolutionary beliefs and those of the liberation army. He created a weekly newspaper, which sold 45,000 copies on its first day of publication. He expressed his ideals through his writings and his speeches, which fostered a growing social and political following. In fact, the occasion of his speeches routinely filled public squares throughout the country. He attracted the passionate interest not only of average Colombians but also of various politicians from different backgrounds, who, on more than one occasion, attempted to use his performances to gain votes for themselves.

Eventually, the Colombian Army determined that Torres was tied to the ELN, and he was ordered by the group’s leaders to end his above ground political work and to join in the guerrilla struggle. On February 16, 1966, he was killed in his first encounter with the security forces. After his death, Torres was accorded many titles, such as “hero,” “revolutionary priest,” and “martyr.” Thus, it is not easy to define an exclusive perspective for Camilo Torres in the pages of Latin America’s history. Rather, his many roles make the matter more complex. There is a possibility that any attempted biography would miss something about this amazing character due to the scores of interpretations that can be made of his actions.

Camilo Torres’ story remains vibrant inspiration for Colombian youth to join progressive social movements today. Unfortunately, while the ELN initially followed Torres’ principles, it since has deteriorated to at times senselessly killing innocent people and has engaged in the same kind of extortion and kidnapping as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has intermittently wrought upon the country throughout the last 30 years. Even though Torres brought theory into practice by developing powerful social analysis, and involved citizens of all backgrounds behind his cause, a peaceful creed of this canon has not yet been realized. Today, the ELN and the FARC, let alone the particularly brutal vigilante force, the AUC, as well as the country’s abusive security forces, all have denigrated Torres’ principles by killing the very Colombians they mechanically profess to protect.

thanks to Patrick Mac Manus

Britain must toughen up on abuses in Colombia, say charities

17 Mar 2009

ABColombia, the coalition of leading British and Irish agencies working in Colombia, has said that British policy must change if it is to contribute to ending Colombia’s 40-year armed conflict and the cocaine trade that helps to fuel it.

Despite the Colombian government’s claim to have ended the conflict, military advances have gone hand in hand with an increase in violations of international humanitarian law by state forces, warns ABColombia in a new report - Fit for Purpose: how to make UK policy on Colombia more effective.

“One of the most disturbing elements of the present human rights crisis is the extrajudicial executions of young people or community leaders by the army who claim they have been killed in combat” said Sophie Haspeslagh, ABColombia Programme and Advocacy Manager.

Talk of a ‘post-conflict’ situation is misguided, the report suggests. Although weakened, the main guerrilla groups continue to commit serious human rights abuses. Despite the demobilisation process, a new generation of paramilitary groups still threaten and kill human rights activists and people living in the countryside.

535 extrajudicial killings were reported between January 2007 and 30 June 2008 in 27 of Colombia’s 32 departments. Colombia recently overtook Afghanistan as the country with the highest number of landmine victims in the world. 895 Colombians fell victim to landmines in 2007, most of which were laid by guerrilla forces.

All groups appear deeply involved in the drugs trade.

While life has become safer for Colombians living in major cities with the number of kidnappings and killings down, for those living in rural areas life continues to get worse. Around half the population lives below the poverty line and inequality has increased as land ownership is consolidated in the hands of the few. Many civilians and human rights activists are living under the threat of assassination or disappearance and violence has forced more than three million people to flee from their homes.

Colombia continues to suffer one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. There are more than three million displaced people in Colombia: a number roughly equivalent to the population of Wales.

“If the British government is serious about tackling both human rights violations and the cocaine trade, as it says, then it must tackle the root causes of the conflict: poverty and social exclusion” said Sophie Haspeslagh.

ABColombia members, CAFOD, Christian Aid (UK & Ireland), Oxfam GB, SCIAF and Trócaire also call for a review of Britain’s controversial military assistance to the Colombian army and police and closer monitoring of the activities of British companies in conflict areas.

“Britain’s close diplomatic, business and military links with Colombia place it under an obligation to review its policy as a matter of urgency” said Jonathan Glennie, country representative for Christian Aid in Colombia.

ABColombia’s members are CAFOD, Christian Aid (UK & Ireland), Oxfam GB, SCIAF andTrócaire. Amnesty International and Peace Brigades International are observer members.

A stream of reports in the last 24 hours of a tense stand-off and impending confrontation between a ‘Minga‘, a gathering of social movements, and the Colombian state. The conflict point is the occupation by 9,000 people of the Pan American highway in the south west. The police have attacked and in the last 24 hours killed 2 and injured over 20 protestors, but at time of writing this force have been unable to dislodge the blockade.

ONIC, the nacional indigenous movement reports that 18 indigenous peoples are at the point of extinction: “The systematic and repeated violations of indigenous peoples rights are evidenced in the assassination of 1,253 indigenous persons and the displacement of at least 53,885 indigenous persons in the last 6 years, the period of Álvaro Uribe’s presidency”. ONIC has called a National Mobilisation of Indigenous and Popular Resistance with protests all over the country.

The special characteristic of the mobilisation in the south west departments of Valle and Cauca is the coming together in direct action of the mostly African descendant cane cutters, who have been on strike since 15 September (see previous Urgent Action), and the militant indigenous groups who have been occupying land to reclaim it as Madre Tierra, Mother Earth.

Supportes should send emails urging that there be a mediated solution to the stand off, to the Colombian Embassy in your country UK Email: mail@colombianembassy.co.uk

For more information visit Colombia Solidarity Campaign

This was in the Morning Star, Colombia remains in the grip of death squads....COLOMBIAN opposition party Polo Democratico warned that “liberty and the right to organise still do not exist in Colombia” on Wednesday after the body of Colombian trade unionist Guillermo Rivera Fuquene was found on a rubbish tip in the city of Ibague.

The Workers Confederation of Colombia said that Mr Rivera had disappeared on April 22 in Bogota after he had been detained by police.

He was the union representative for workers at an office in Bogota’s city administration and an activist for the left-wing Polo Democratico.

The confederation confirmed that Mr Rivera had been killed six days after he disappeared.

Polo Democratico revealed that witness statements confirmed that he had been seen with police officers shortly before he disappeared.

The party released a statement which read: “This shows that the official guarantees from President Uribe’s government protecting the lives of union and political activists - their liberty and the right to organise - still do not exist in Colombia.”

In an article for the June/July 2008 issue of Red Pepper, JFC Chair and NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear says the British government must reverse its support for the Uribe government and work with other European powers to help find a peaceful and just solution to Colombia’s civil war

Blood on Britain’s hands

When, in February, the Guardian published a photograph of Kim Howells, the British Foreign Office minister responsible for relations with Latin America, posing with the head of the Colombian army, General Mario Montoya, and soldiers from one of the notorious High Mountain Battalions (HMB) of the Colombian army, many people in the labour movement and elsewhere were scandalised by his choice of friends. Sadly, while Howell’s behaviour is lamentable, it is emblematic of the UK’s flawed policy towards President Álvaro Uribe’s right-wing regime in Colombia.

There is plenty of evidence linking the HMB, an elite force of the Colombian Army, with human rights violations. International groups such as Amnesty have denounced the killing of trade unionists at their hands, while Colombian human rights defenders have documented the gross and systematic violations carried out by the HMB, including the torture, murder and disappearance of numerous civilians. For his part, General Montoya is reported to have collaborated with right-wing paramilitary death squads and drug traffickers, groups which are inextricably linked with the army in the repressive policy of the Colombian regime.

The UK has been a staunch supporter of Uribe, in power since 2002, and currently provides his hard-line regime with secret military aid. While the UK government refuses to disclose the extent of British aid to Colombia, citing ‘national security’, a Guardian investigation has revealed that it includes SAS training, setting up and equipping an intelligence centre and providing military advice to the HMB. The UK government has also admitted giving the Colombian army training and advice on urban warfare techniques, counter-guerrilla strategy and ‘psychiatry’.

As chair of the TUC-backed human rights organisation, Justice for Colombia (JFC), I have attended meetings with the British government at which I and other trade-union leaders have passed on detailed information about the gross human rights violations committed by the British-backed HMB and other units of the Colombian army. We have outlined why British military aid to the Uribe regime, and to these abusive units in particular, is unacceptable. While the UK government doesn’t deny that it assists the HMB or that they are involved in torture, murder and gross human rights violations, it justifies this aid by claiming that the Uribe regime is making ’significant progress’.

Extra-judicial executions

The reality on the ground is very different. In March this year a report by Colombian human rights groups documented 955 executions of civilians carried out by the Colombian army between July 2002 and June 2007 - a 65 per cent increase on the previous five year period. This overall trend in extra-judicial executions has been confirmed by the UN high commissioner for human rights.

In another worrying development, in April the CUT trade union federation (the Colombian TUC) reported a 77 per cent increase in killings of trade unionists during the first part of this year. These murders formed part of an upsurge in attacks and killings of human rights defenders, trade unionists, and other civil society actors. It came shortly after Uribe’s presidential advisor, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, suggested that civil society groups that had organised a protest on 6 March against state and paramilitary human rights abuses were linked to the left-wing FARC guerrilla group. A letter sent by prominent international human rights defenders denouncing this and accusing the Colombian regime of endangering the lives of activists went largely unreported in the English language press.

In this climate, it is unsurprising that Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist. In fact, more trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia during Uribe’s presidency than in the rest of the world over the same period. But it is not just murder. Death threats, forced disappearances and imprisonment without trial are just some of the other attacks suffered by Colombian workers – all, like the murders, carried out in a climate of impunity.

A third major factor that should worry the British government is the reports detailing the close links between outlawed right-wing paramilitary death squads and Uribe, his close friends and supporters and the Colombian state.

Damming connections

A damning article, ‘Colombia political scandal imperilling US ties’ by Indira A R Lakshmanan of the Boston Globe, published widely earlier this year, outlined a number of worrying connections. They include the facts that, first, last year, Uribe’s foreign minister was forced to resign after her brother, a senator, was jailed for colluding with the paramilitaries in a series of murders and kidnappings; second that, in the same month, the head of Colombia’s secret police, who also served as Uribe’s campaign manager, was arrested for ‘giving a hit list of trade unionists and activists to paramilitaries, who then killed them’; and third that 14 of Uribe’s closest congressional allies sit behind bars for colluding with paramilitary death squads. At the time of writing, 62 of Uribe’s political allies are being investigated for allegedly collaborating with these death squads.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, journalists who have questioned Uribe on his past or present links with paramilitaries have subsequently received death threats and, in many cases, have been forced to leave the country. In October last year, for example, Gonzalo Guillen, a reporter for the Miami Herald’s Spanish language newspaper El Nuevo Herald fled Colombia because of death threats he received after Uribe publicly criticsed him three days earlier. Guillen explained that he was leaving Colombia after receiving 24 death threats in 48 hours. In the light of this, it is not surprising that journalists are reluctant to investigate Uribe’s regime.

Even so, despite the danger to journalists, news of the Uribe regime and its role in Colombia’s human rights crisis does filter out. Last year in the US, Democrat Senators cited General Montoya’s alleged links to the death squads when freezing $50 million of US military aid to Colombia. And Al Gore, the former US vice president, recently refused to share a platform with President Uribe, reportedly because of concerns over allegations linking the Colombian leader to the paramilitaries.

It appears, then, that the political tide in the US is turning against wholehearted support for Uribe’s regime and that if the Democrats win the presidency, the US policy towards Colombia might come under review.

Changing policy

In Britain powerful voices within the Labour party have already called on our own government to change its policy towards Colombia. The campaign to end British military assistance now has the support of more than half of Labour MPs, as well as the entire British trade union movement, every Labour MEP and the majority of Labour’s ruling NEC. Last year, the international human rights organisation Human Rights Watch congratulated Justice for Colombia for publishing a statement during the 2007 Labour conference, calling for a suspension of UK military aid to Colombia on human rights grounds.

It is worrying then that the British government is refusing to listen. A letter of January 2008 from JFC to the foreign secretary, David Miliband, requesting that the government investigate over 30 assassinations carried out in recent months by Colombian soldiers who may have received British military training, remains unanswered.

And in an outrageous twist to the UK’s relationship with Colombia, in March this year Kim Howells accused JFC of supporting the FARC guerrilla group. While Howells was forced to retract his comments after being roundly condemned, with a number of unions calling on Gordon Brown to sack him if he didn’t, such ill-informed remarks could put at risk the lives of those trade unionists, journalists and human rights defenders involved in projects supported by JFC.

Instead of smearing groups working towards peace and social justice in Colombia, the UK government should listen to calls for change and rethink its policy. It should by no means disengage. Rather, instead of funding the perpetrators of the continuing slaughter in Colombia, Britain should start playing a positive role by switching funding from military aid to humanitarian projects. We could begin by joining our EU partners who are already involved in the search for a peaceful solution to Colombia’s conflict. After 60 years of civil war it is clear that only a politically mediated rather than a military solution will bring about peace.

Jeremy Dear is the chair of Justice for Colombia (JFC)–www.justiceforcolombia.org

For one of the best analyses of the political complexities of Colombia, see ‘Colombia: Inside the Labyrinth’ by Jenny Pearce (Latin America Bureau, 1990)

Click here to buy the June/July 2008 issue of Red Pepper:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article480.html

Fron Today’s Morning Star
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez urged Colombian revolutionaries on Sunday to disarm, free dozens of hostages and end their decades-long armed struggle.

Mr Chavez sent the message to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), saying that their 44-year armed struggle, in defence of workers and peasants rights, was no longer justified.

“The guerilla war is history,” Mr Chavez said, during his weekly television and radio program Alo Presidente (Hello President).

“At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerilla movement is out of place.”

Addressing new FARC leader Alfonso Cano - who succeeded Manuel Marulanda following his death in March at the age of 77 - Mr Chavez said: “I think the time has come for the FARC to free everyone they have in the mountains. It would be a great humanitarian gesture, in exchange for nothing.”

In March, the Colombian government accused Mr Chavez of providing financial aid to the FARC, following a raid into its southern neighbour Ecuador’s territory, which killed senior FARC commander Raul Reyes.

Colombian army officers claimed to have discovered cryptic clues to Mr Chavez’s support for the FARC on laptop computers that had been recovered from the bombed-out jungle camp.

Mr Reyes and Mr Chavez were negotiating the release of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who has spent six years in FARC captivity.

The Venezuelan president called on world governments to remove the FARC from their lists of so-called terrorist organisations earlier this year, suggesting that the revolutionary army’s struggle was legitimate.

The FARC has said it would be willing to swap hostages for guerrillas imprisoned in Colombia and the United States.

Daily newspaper Voz editor Carlos Lozano, who has mediated between the government and rebels in the past, told Caracol radio on Sunday that he had re-established contact with the FARC,.

Lozano said that, while he had not spoken directly with Cano, “everything is going the right way.”

But a FARC statement posted on the internet on Sunday suggested that the group is far from laying down its arms.

Written by leading cadre Luciano Marin Arango, alias “Ivan Marquez,” and dated June 5, the statement demanded that new elections be called to oust Colombia’s government and Congress.

A jailed paramilitary said in sworn testimony that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, then a governor, helped militias plan a 1997 massacre that left at least 15 people dead in El Aro.

By GONZALO GUILLEN AND GERARDO REYES, El Nuevo Herald

A jailed paramilitary fighter claims Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and his brother helped plan a 1997 massacre in a village suspected of harboring leftist guerrillas, according to sworn testimony given to the nation’s prosecutor general and obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

Uribe revealed and denied the allegation in an interview with Colombian radio last week, saying it was another of many fraudulent attempts to link him to the right-wing paramilitaries.

The accuser, Enrique Villalba Hernandez, 36, is a former paramilitary serving a 33-year sentence at a Bogotá penitentiary. He surrendered to authorities three months after the massacre and confessed to taking part in the killings and other atrocities.

There’s no known independent evidence to support his allegation, and his testimony contains two inconsistencies, including the fact that one of the Colombian military officers who he says attended a meeting in late 1997 was killed in April of that year. Portions of Villalba’s testimony were cited by the International Human Rights Court in a ruling two years ago that condemned Colombia for the 1997 massacre in the township of El Aro, in the northern department of Antioquia. Uribe was governor of Antioquia at the time.

The ruling accused Colombian security forces of collaborating with the paramilitaries — illegal militias created by ranchers and businessmen to fight the leftist guerrillas — in the massacre of at least 15 El Aro residents.

It also cites testimony claiming that Uribe refused to protect the residents of El Aro after learning that a paramilitary attack was imminent.
But earlier this year, testifying under oath before prosecutors, Villalba alleged that Uribe and his brother Santiago had been at two meetings with the paramilitaries before and after the killings, according to copies of his 19-page testimony obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

Villalba testified that three days before the massacre, a meeting was held in an Antioquia farm between the paramilitaries, commanders of the Army’s IV Brigade, police officials and the Uribe brothers to plan the attack and rescue eight ranchers who had been kidnapped by the rebels.
”Also there were Santiago Uribe and Alvaro Uribe, who was then governor,” he alleged. Alvaro Uribe told the paramilitaries “to do whatever had to be done.”

Villalba has told the daily El Colombiano of Medellín that the paramilitary carried a list of victims when they entered El Aro, which had about 500 inhabitants, on Oct. 25 1997. When asked by prosecutors if he had ever met the Uribe brothers before the alleged meeting with the paramilitaries, Villalba replied that he had not known Alvaro Uribe, but that Santiago “was always known in the [paramilitary] organization.”

Villalba stated that he found out who Uribe was after the massacre, when the then-governor returned to the same farm to congratulate the paramilitaries for rescuing the kidnap victims.