Colombia Extradites Top Warlords To U.S.

Paramilitaries Failed To Comply With Peace Pact; List Includes Senior Warlord Salvatore Mancuso

(CBS/AP)  Colombia extradited 14 top paramilitary warlords to the United States early Tuesday for failing to comply with the peace pact under which they demobilized.

Interior Minister Carlos Holguin said those extradited include the most senior warlord, Salvatore Mancuso. Many were wanted on drug-trafficking charges.

Mancuso, who appeared on Sunday's 60 Minutes for a report on Chiquita Brands International paying paramilitaries nearly $2 million, helped negotiate a deal with the Colombian government in 2003 that allowed more than 30,000 paramilitaries to give up their arms and demobilize in return for reduced prison sentences. As part of the deal, the paramilitaries must truthfully confess to all crimes, or face much harsher penalties.

The militias are responsible for thousands of killings and the theft of millions of acres of land.

Among those sent abroad were Diego Murillo, known as Don Berna, and Rodrigo Tovar, who went by the nom de guerre Jorge 40.

The move comes after last week's extradition to the U.S. of one of the country's most feared paramilitary warlords, Carlos Mario Jimenez, known as Macaco. The Colombian government accused him of continuing to run his drug gangs from behind bars.

Holguin said that the extraditions did not mean the end of the peace process with the paramilitaries.

[vanillsbeam]

Chiquita Brands International is one sick 25-years-old puppy -- a chip off the century old block -- big, bad daddy dog, the United Fruit Company. Innocence is not a family characteristic and stupidity lies only in the minds of sympathetic beholders. The latter distinction is reserved for the prosecutor at the United States Justice Department who got all warm and wet when deciding not to prosecute any corporate officer of Chiquita for paying extortion to terrorist organizations. In addition to prosecution for smuggling cocaine into the United States, any information that Salvatore Mancuso can provide on American corporations conducting business in Central America should be examined carefully, including the transportation of smuggled cocaine on Chiquita company ships. The delay in his questioning by the Justice Department suggests that the department does not want to hear about corporate malfeasance or their CEO''s indifference for human life. While investigating Chiquita Brands and its CEO''s, Rep. Delahunt should not ignore the big bird in Cincinnati, Ohio, Carl H. Lindner. Granted, Chiquita may not be the only American corporation to finance terrorists in their quest for wealth, and facilitated by free trade agreements and Justice Department partiality we are promised it will not be the last. Do you detect a joint partnership of government and big business in an obsession of global greed?
Vanillsbeam

[ioweign]

Colombia extradited 14 top paramilitary warlords to the United States early Tuesday for failing to comply with the peace pact under which they demobilized.

That border fence is really working - now we have to extradite aliens to get them prison time (and the prison cost)...