Across the Americas

The banana conglomorate has confessed to paying right-wing paramilitaries. By Eoin O'Carroll, csmonitor.com, March 22, 2007

The Colombian government says that it will likely seek the extradition of eight unnamed people affiliated with the US banana giant Chiquita Brands International for their alleged involvement in the company's payments to and arms trafficking with a violent right-wing paramilitary group.

Chris Kraul, The Los Angeles Times -- 27-Feb-07

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Colombia's foreign minister resigned Monday, the latest casualty in the country's growing investigation into ties between right-wing paramilitary forces and top politicians.

By SIBYLLA BRODZINKSY/BOGOTA -- TIME -- Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2007

For Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, the arrests last week of five senior senators allied to his government, on charges they colluded with feared right-wing paramilitary groups, could hardly have come at a worse time. There was obviously the embarrassment of seeing staunch supporters hauled off to jail for allegedly working with the same militias that have carried out some of the most grisly massacres of Colombia's interminable civil war. But the crisis also had an international dimension, not only because early next month Uribe is expecting a visit from President Bush — who considers the conservative Uribe one of his own few allies in Latin America, and whose administration lists Colombia's right-wing paras as drug-trafficking terrorists — but also because one of the senators accused in the scandal was the brother of Colombia's foreign minister.

Constanza Vieira -- CARTAGENA, Colombia, Feb 9 (IPS) - Former paramilitary fighter Wilson Salazar, alias "El Loro", was impatient over and annoyed by the prosecutor's questions and the charges put forth by the victims' defence attorneys. He claimed he was being blamed for more crimes than he had committed.

Constanza Vieira, BOGOTA, Nov 17 (IPS) - The arrests of several Colombian lawmakers for their links to extreme-right paramilitary militias have given further credence to reports by human rights organisations "of how deeply embedded the paramilitaries are in the local and regional public institutions," Carlos Rodríguez, assistant director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), told IPS.