COLOMBIA: BROTHER OF DECEASED PARAMILITARY LEADER ACCUSED OF HIS MURDER.
Government authorities in Colombia have found the corpse of Carlos Castano, founding leader of the ultraright-wing paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), who has been missing since a shootout on his land in 2004. Prosecutors have accused his brother, Jose Vicente Castano, of ordering Carlos' murder and called for him to turn himself in to authorities to face trial. The allegation roughly coincided with the government's arrest of 14 former prominent leaders of paramilitary groups, a group arrest that took place during a US anti-narcotics official's visit to Colombia.
Carlos Castano's body found after denunciation
Carlos Castano went missing after a violent assault on his compound in April 2004 left several of his bodyguards dead (see NotiSur, 2004-05-07). He had been a central figure in negotiations with the government to demobilize paramilitary fighters, have them turn in weapons, and move the disarmed fighters to havens (see NotiSur, 2004-06-04, 2005-06-17 and 2005-07-22). With his disappearance there were fears that talks would fall apart, but they subsequently moved forward to the satisfaction of government officials, although not to the satisfaction of human rights groups and US government representatives.
The skeletal remains of 14 people believed to be victims of right-wing paramilitaries were unearthed in a mass grave in southwest Colombia, authorities said Aug. 31. By Sept. 4, they had confirmed that one of them was Carlos Castano, a founder of Colombia's brutal far-right militias. He was 39 when he died.
The office of chief federal prosecutor Mario Iguaran said Iguaran visited the grave in a rural area near La Hormiga, in Putumayo province, 530 km southwest of the capital.
"The federal prosecution has the full identification that this is Castano," Iguaran said, pointing to a 99.99% match between Castano's DNA and that of the skeleton. A militia gunman who confessed to killing Castano in April 2004 led investigators to the shallow grave where he said he had buried the warlord.
Forensic experts suspected they could find more victims as they continued to search the area around the grave in an investigation into a paramilitary militia known to operate in the area and accused of killing civilians.
In the last 18 months, as a peace process with paramilitary groups has advanced, investigators have discovered more than 400 corpses. More than a quarter of those have been found since June at 20 mass graves scattered across the country. The AUC has been implicated in the vast majority of those crimes.
The AUC entered a peace deal with the government in 2003, bringing a partial lull to the violence associated with Colombia's four-decade civil war. The country's homicide rate--among the world's highest--dropped sharply, as did the number of civilian massacres. More than 30,000 right-wing fighters have demobilized as part of the peace process, according to government...
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