Colombia Rebels: U.S. Captives Are POWs

AP ^ | Feb 24, 2003 | SUSANNAH A. NESMITH

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Chavez Plans for Terrorist Regime***Reports on the investigation rescued from Chavez's burn pile and showed to Insight specify that two of the suspects sought by the FBI -- Fathi Mohammed Awada [Venezuelan ID card No. V6282373] and Hussein Kassine Yassine [No. V6293922] -- withdrew $400,000 from the branch of the Banco Confederado in Margarita before gong to Lebanon in December 2001. The report concludes that the individuals were "engaging in suspicious transactions which validate the suspicions of the U.S. government."

The money transfers never were recorded by Venezuela's national banking superintendent, a Chavez appointee. U.S. diplomatic sources in Caracas confirm that official inquiries through Venezuela's banking authorities have failed to reveal evidence on terrorist money laundering. "We've only consulted officials of the government," admits a U.S. economic officer.

Intelligence sources familiar with the cover-up say Chavez is withholding information on the Arabs, some of whom were important financial contributors to his presidential campaign. The report, withheld from the United States, also mentions Nasser Mohammed al-Din, described as a powerful entrepreneur and a close personal friend of Chavez, at whose home in Margarita the Venezuelan president stays on his frequent visits to the resort island, which is a favored venue for his private meetings with Castro. According to presidential pilot Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, Chavez and Castro get together two or three times a week.

Margarita Island appears to be the center of an extensive terrorist financial network stretching throughout the Caribbean to Panama and the Cayman Islands, where three Afghanis traveling on false Pakistani passports were caught entering from Cuba with $200,000 in cash in August 2001. According to British colonial authorities, efforts to launder the money through Cayman banks also involved a group of Arab businessmen.

Chavez's ties to international terrorism date back to the days of his bloody 1992 military rebellion against the government of Carlos Andres Perez in which nearly 100 people were killed. After being received with honors by Castro in Havana, Chavez proceeded to Tripoli and Baghdad. "He came back with a lot of money to form his Movimiento Revolucionario Venezolano [MRV] and run for president," says Col. Pedro Soto, a Chavez supporter at the time.

Chavez paid presidential state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran in February 2001, signing cooperation agreements with Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Tehran's ruling mullahs. Castro visited Libya, Iran and Syria some months later. An MRV politician and close Chavez aide closely tied to the Circulos Bolivarianos, Freddy Bernal, was in Iraq last March. He got caught trying to move arms into Saudi Arabia by U.N. peacekeeping forces policing the border.

Back in the days when he was a frustrated coup leader, Chavez also received help from Colombian narcoguerrilla organizations. He now is repaying them by closing Venezuelan airspace to U.S. antidrug flights. A military-intelligence report shown to Insight by the former commander of the 2nd army theater of operations on the Colombian border, Gen. Nestor Gonzales, shows that the Colombian drug forces are being protected by Chavez in camps inside Venezuelan territory. The sick leader of Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN), Comandante Pablo, rests under DISIP protection at a villa in the upmarket Caracas neighborhood of El Marques.***

[piasa]

Considering that they already executed some right on the spot, I'd say it's reasonable to be skeptical...

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Rebels say they're holding Americans - Colombia's FARC assails U.S., demands prisoner exchange - BY MARIKA LYNCH mlynch@herald.com [Full Text] BOGOTA - Colombian guerrillas labeled three kidnapped American hostages prisoners of war Monday and demanded a a widespread exchange of prisoners as the price of their release.

In a statement harshly critical of the U.S. role in Colombia, the rebels said the Americans -- plus dozens of kidnapped lawmakers and police officers -- would be swapped for all imprisoned members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC. The exchange would have to take place in a demilitarized safe haven, the rebels said.

Hostages now for 12 days, the Americans -- Department of Defense contractors on an apparent intelligence mission -- were seized after their plane went down in jungle about 200 miles southwest of Bogotá. U.S. officials say engine trouble caused the crash.

Two others in the plane were shot to death near the crash site. On Monday, the government charged one captured rebel in the deaths of crew members Thomas John Janis, an American, and Colombian intelligence sergeant Luis Alcides Cruz -- both of whom were shot at close range. According to a visiting U.S. Congressional delegation, Janis is a former member of the U.S. military.

Hundreds of Colombian soldiers, with the aid of the United States, have scoured the southern mountain jungle in Caquetá province to no avail.

NO TALKS

A U.S. State Department official appeared to rule out negotiations with the rebels.

'The FARC is responsible for the American crew members' safety, health and well-being. We have not authorized or requested any group to negotiate. We demand that the FARC immediately release the U.S. crew members,'' said spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz.

The FARC has been pressuring the Colombian government for a prisoner exchange, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who originally said no such deal was possible, has appointed a commission to explore the possibility.

On Saturday, the first time the FARC acknowledged that it was holding the Americans, the Marxist-led group said it could guarantee the men's safety only if the Colombian army stopped patrolling an area near the crash site. Uribe refused.

On Monday, the FARC said its tough stance was justified by the direct involvement of the United States in the nearly four-decade conflict. The hostages, the rebels have claimed, were CIA agents gathering information to target them.

As a measure of American hostility, the FARC singled out Plan Colombia, the $2 billion aid plan from Washington that provides funds not only to impede the cocaine trade but to train Colombian soldiers to fight the guerrillas.

''The aforementioned proves irrefutably the direct participation of high-ranking gringo officers in overt and covert military operations . . . which de facto makes them -- once captured . . . prisoners of war,'' the FARC declared in a written statement.

The rebels, who make money off the drug trade, were further angered by reports that said the United States had dispatched another 150 soldiers to find the missing Americans. But Col. David McWilliams, spokesman for the Miami-based Southern Command, said only some 40 U.S. soldiers had been sent to Colombia to help in the rescue.

Regardless, the FARC saw more troops as a further sign of the ``barefaced invasion of our country by the United States, which violates once more our sovereignty with the complicity of the toadying government of [President] Uribe Velez.''

CANDIDATE

A proposed prisoner exchange could also include the release of Eugenio Vargas Perdomo, known as ''Carlos Bolas,'' a member of the FARC extradited from Suriname to the United States last year. Vargas is accused of being an arms and drug broker for the rebel group. Vargas is the only known FARC member in U.S. custody.

The newest FARC member to be charged in a crime, though, is Fidel Casallas Bastos Dias, accused of killing two aboard the crashed plane. [End]

Herald staff writers Andres Oppenheimer and Renato Perez contributed to this report.

[hobbes1]

IT is time to tell the leftist loving Democrats in this country to stand by, while those of us that actuially cherish liberal rights, as correctly understood, start exterminiating these vermin.

IN 6 weeks time, FARC might want to prepare them selves for a little Saddamizing........

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Brought to you, of course, by the War on Drugs: a real war.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Something better give.

[hobbes1]

I agree.

I only hope that what gives, is the American lefts desperate love for PsuedoSocialist thugs.

[Lizard_King]

Why are the right wing paras on our shite list?

The vast majority of the paramilitary forces are no more right wing than the Nazis were...it is a fiction created by the popular misconception of right and left and the desire of intellectuals to create a moral equivalency between leftists and any respectable political faction.

The problem with the paramilitaries is that the majority of them are just as prone to profitting off of the drug trade, using kidnapping to raise funds, and indiscriminate killing as the FARC (although obviously on a smaller scale due to their smaller numbers). Helping the enemies of our enemies without consideration of what it was we were siding with has been disastrous in the past, and would be so in this case as well, IMHO.

[Lizard_King]

Oh, and as to the unfortunate subjects of this article, I would not be surprised if they are already dead or in such a state as to wishing they were. The creativity of these savages is matched only by the Communist regimes from which they drew their training and inspiration. We can but hope that they will find peace soon.

[F16Fighter]

"If a bad actor with a Austrian accent can do it..."

Come on -- ya think playing a teutonic cyborg in real life AND in every movie is easy??...

And one more compelling question: If Aah-nold can defeat Martian dictators, Columbian Rebels, and invincible Predator Aliens, why hasn't Rumsfeld called him yet?

[wardaddy]

I was living in Colombia during the M.A.S. days and believe me they struck major fear in M-19 and FARC.

I worked back then with Victor Caranza who is now up to his eyeballs in this stuff(Paras) and is wanted here. He was a Muzo Emerald Mine principal.

Compared to FARC and the rest of the Terrs, the Paras are indeed more rightists in their thinking and motivations.

They are funded by dopers (nothing new there) and they are very rough....they have to be unless they wish to give over the Magdalena and Cuaca valleys over to FARC. I had not heard they were into kidnapping unless it's of their enemies.

[wardaddy]

Yep....and if it weren't for dirty fighting, Chile, Argentina, maybe Uruguay, maybe Brasil(reverting as we speak), Bolivia, Peru, Nicaragua, El Slavador, Honduras, Guatemala ....all in addition to Colombia would be living out the Castro model right now.

[Travis McGee]

It seems like we would rather see Cubas across the hemisphere than get a brush of mud on our starched state department sleevs.

[wardaddy]

Looking back....who was worse Somoza or the Sandies?, Roberto D'Aubisson and Arena or the Salvadoran Terrs?, Generals or Monteneros?, Allende or Pinochet?....you get my drift.

Unfortunately our State Dept. is still in Alger Hiss mode.

As I said before, I once knew Caranza fairly well. He's not an angel but he knows damn well how to break FARC's will to fight or at a minimum slow their advances through the populace. Guys like him in rural Northern Colombia have no choice. They have to either submit to the Terrs or kill the hell out of them. The government forces outside of the bush hat tiger striped Elite Battalions (with US guys alongside btw) have lost the will to fight.

[Travis McGee]

Leftists in congress have demanded that right wing paramilitary groups in Col. and elsewhere be put on terrorist lists to secure their support.

And Col. has a constitutional problem with not being allowed to arm militias, (which led to the defeat of the S.L. in Peru.) With no ability to arm themselves, and the Army often afraid to enter, villages have no where else to turn for a self defense force than illegal "paramilitaries." It's a complex situation.

[Lizard_King]

Very interesting. Definitely good to get a perspective from the ground. I still think it would be impossible for the US to support the paramilitaries without some sort of Iran-Contra covert scheme, and those have a poor track record. I believe the elimination of the FARC is important to almost warrant the "by any means necessary" style of policy; but I think it highly unlikely without massive changes in our State Department.

[wardaddy]

I agree except I think the Contras did wear down the Sandies and made it difficult for them to consolidate.....however, in the end....the Sandies disastrous economic policies were just as big a factor in their collapse....that plus the fact that the Ortega Brothers were more like Versace Communists and not 110% despots like Fidel....they simply lacked the fortitude for the long haul. Lucky for Nica that that freak Borges wasn't El Jefe...he was one meanass homo sadist.

I was in Nica during Somoza while in college touring CA war zones on a lark, during the Sandies (I can still recall the nauseating Birkie clad idiots at the Intercontinental at breakfast) and I was there after the Sandies capitualted. I bought one of Somoza's old frieghters in Corinto and had to pay off Umberto Ortega and his cronies to get the ship released in 1989. Long story.

The Somoza years were the best that country has ever seen. Some places just aren't suitable for representational government as we know it.

[Lizard_King]

Some places just aren't suitable for representational government as we know it.

I think I can definitely agree with that.

[El Conservador]

As a Colombian myself, let me give you an overview of this situation:

For the FARC, any American citizen working in Colombia on anything (doesn't need to be military aid-related) is considered as a "CIA agent" and kidnapped for ransom or for a "prisoner exchange", which in practice is a guerrilla release.

The FARC has not taken over just because they're highly impopular inside Colombia, who is mostly an entreprising people (you have your moochers and those who expect the gubmint to do everything for them) and despises Communism. It survives because of the drug trade and the support it has from the Colombian leftist academia (entirely within the public schools and universities) and the leftist elites, governments and intellectuals in Europe and North America (USA and Canada).

The only effective way for the US to help fight the guerrillas is helping the constitutional Government and Armed Forces of Colombia. Supporting the AUC (paras) will only make matters worse. Paras are equally unpopular among the peasantry, which is more likely to collaborate with the Army than with the AUC.

As mentioned earlier by others, the AUC also finances themselves with drug money, and their human right abuses are as bad or worse than those of the FARC's, which is why they're unpopular.

The only ones needing any help are the Colombian Armed Forces.

P.S: You may want to set up a Colombia ping list... there's a lot of people who always post on Colombia-related threads.

[livius]

Another aspect of this "prisoner of war" thing is that FARC wants to portray itself as a legitimate government with a legitimate military (since, naturally, only "legitimate" armies can engage in war, as opposed to the guerrilla attacks carried out by FARC).

Dealing with them as legitimate - which Pastrana, under the guidance of Bill Clinton, did - only encourages them and confuses the populace.

One of the greatest struggles faced by Uribe now is to reassert the legitimacy of the Colombian government and State, because FARC has portrayed itself as a parallel government/state and in some parts of the country has even been accepted as such.

I think that negotiating with them as if they were a state or a government only legitimizes them and strenghthens their hand. Building the Colombian military and exterminating FARC is the only way to go.