Uncle
Sam's Sign Says: 'Sentences of paramilitaries'
Murdered
Victim says: 'I would also like a shorter sentence'
[El Tiempo, Colombia]
El Tiempo,
Colombia
Narco-Killers
Saved By Extradition to
the United States
"Gringo judges consider
fighting domestic drug consumption more important than penalizing those responsible
for massacres in Colombia. Thus, paradoxically, the secrets known by narco-paramilitaries may help redeem them from the heinous
crimes they have committed."
By Daniel
Samper Pisano
Translated By
Halszka Czarnocka
August 7, 2008
Colombia
- El Tiempo - Original Article (Spanish)
The government fears that Colombian
paramilitaries extradited to the United States will negotiate sentences with
U.S. judges that are more like rewards than penalties - or in other words
prison terms shorter than under the Colombian Law of Justice and Peace, which
is already quite lenient. [Under this law, if the paramilitaries make full
confessions, they will serve no more than eight years in prison, no matter what
atrocities they committed, even crimes against humanity 
].
The fleeting time of four to eight years that these perpetrators of massacres
would have to serve in Colombia could become just a few months in the United
States. And this is in exchange for what? For the narco-paramilitaries
to reveal intimate details of the drug business to the judge. It seems that
several of them are already blessing the day that they were extradited, now
that they have obtained very favorable agreements.
[The paramilitaries emerged
in the last century essentially as a reaction to left-wing guerillas, like the FARC, and they were often backed by or worked directly with
the Colombian government. In fact "para-politics"
is a common phrase in Colombia, used to refer to the influence that
paramilitaries wield on the government .]
It's obviously a bit late for
the Government to worry about what has become a monstrous mockery of thousands
of Colombian victims. They should have thought about that before abruptly
agreeing to the extradition of criminals with such terrifying histories. It's
also clear that this is a consequence of one of those strange fits that
occasionally afflicts the good doctor Uribe, a great
player but so temperamental. If on that dawn last May 13 the government had
included some minimum sentences as a condition for the extradition of fourteen
paramilitaries, we wouldn’t now live in horror of bumping into paramilitary
bosses shopping in Miami or waving to Donald Duck in Disneyland before the
decade was out.
But it's equally clear that we
must support the government’s initiative. U.S. justice must absorb the fact
that the demand for severe punishment is not just a bureaucratic official
scruple, but a demand of the Colombian people, who will feel profoundly
deceived if these paramilitary commanders end up like the celebrated Mafioso
Henry Hill , the
inspiration behind Martin Scorsese's movie Goodfellas, who exchanged decades in prison for
collaboration with the DEA and who now lives happily in Malibu,
California.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
We Colombians tend to think
that our system of justice is garbage (it's not very good, actually), and that those
of other countries are spotlessly clean, rigorous and fair to all. To console
you (or perhaps bring more discomfort), I'd like to tell you about Spain's ETA
terrorist, Iñaki de Juana , author of a
1986 attack in which 25 police were killed and who recently was freed.
Condemned to a 3,000 year prison term, he took advantage of various legal loopholes
and served only eighteen years for his crime.
Jesus Maria Lopez of Colombia cries over the
coffin containing
the remains of his sister
in Medellin, July 15. Colombia's attorney
general released 27 sets of
human remains of those killed by
paramilitary fighters to relatives.
While the European Union
approved a measure that authorizes the detention of poor undocumented people
for up to a year and a half, de Juana got off with nine months for every person
he killed. The expiration of an immigrant visa could cost more than two murders
committed by a terrorist. What kind of justice is that?
The problem is that the
priorities of Europe and the United States differ from ours. Global economic
problems have erupted in rich countries who are on the
hunt for immigrants. Private clinics in the United States are deporting costly
[undocumented] patients from the Third World as if they were sacks of potatoes;
on the Old Continent, the business of “Europeanizing” flourishes, as Latinos
and Orientals alter their physical features to avoid having their papers
checked on the street.
Gringo judges consider
fighting domestic drug consumption more important than penalizing those
responsible for distant massacres. Thus, paradoxically, the secrets known by
"narco-para" may help redeem them from the
heinous crimes they committed as paramilitaries.
To help prevent this, I
propose that we massively-express our views to the U.S. embassy: AmbassadorB@state.gov.
CLICK HERE FOR SPANISH
VERSION
[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US August 9, 9:45pm]
