Pubdate: Sun, 16 Dec 2001
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2001 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Tod Robberson

MILITIA LEADER'S REVELATIONS IGNITING FEAR IN COLOMBIA

'It Makes Me Think Of Leaving,' Says Bishop Cited In Tell-All Book

CALI, COLOMBIA - The bishop of Colombia's second-largest city, Monsignor 
Isaias Duarte Cancino, sat at his desk with a look of utter astonishment as 
he flipped through the pages of the nation's hottest-selling new book, My 
Confession.

The author, paramilitary leader Carlos Castano, is the most-wanted man in 
Colombia, accused by prosecutors of ordering political assassinations and 
the slaying of thousands of peasants some by chainsaw because of their 
alleged links to Colombian guerrillas.

On Page 173, he identifies Monsignor Duarte as his "friend." Because of 
that single word, the bishop says, he fears for his life.

Like a holy man called in to perform an exorcism, Monsignor Duarte was the 
man whom the government contacted whenever it needed to convey a message or 
arrange a secret meeting with Mr. Castano, leader of the 13,000-member 
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Monsignor Duarte's only condition 
was that his own participation remain top secret.

Much to the bishop's shock and terror, Mr. Castano has decided to tell all 
in his new narrative, which arrived in bookstores last week.

"It leaves me cold," Monsignor Duarte said as he flipped back and forth, 
reading the book for the first time. "This puts people's lives in danger, 
including my own. Truthfully? It makes me think of leaving."

He is not alone in being concerned about the book's revelations. Mr. 
Castano also describes how he met secretly with top government officials 
even though they had offered a $1 million bounty for his capture.

One of the officials who met with Mr. Castano at Monsignor Duarte's home in 
1996 was then-interior minister Horacio Serpa, who is now Colombia's 
leading presidential candidate

Human rights groups say Mr. Castano's revelations add weight to their 
longstanding contentions that the government and military have always been 
capable of capturing Mr. Castano but simply have chosen not to.

"For anyone looking at the situation, it was always abundantly clear that 
if they wanted to get him, they could get him," said Robin Kirk, Colombian 
investigator of Human Rights Watch. Given the book's revelations, she 
added, "They obviously didn't want to get him."

Mr. Castano's ability to enter and leave Cali and hold at least two 
meetings in Monsignor Duarte's suburban home underscores the paramilitary 
leader's ease of movement, which he describes in detail throughout his 
book. Mr. Serpa declined to comment on Mr. Castano's revelations, but the 
monsignor confirmed that the meetings did occur.

Mr. Serpa has campaigned on a law-and-order platform that emphasizes 
cracking down militarily on Colombia's illegal insurgent groups. It is too 
early to tell how Mr. Castano's book will affect Mr. Serpa's presidential 
campaign.

The nation's chief prosecutor for terrorist offenses, Carlos Sanchez 
Peinaldo, said Mr. Serpa could face indictment for holding such a meeting, 
regardless of his then-status as a government minister. Colombian law 
strictly limits the circumstances under which any individual can meet with 
a warlord or a wanted criminal, Mr. Sanchez explained.

Mr. Castano's book is replete with photographs of him flying around the 
countryside in one of his group's seven helicopters, reviewing troops, or 
sitting at a computer writing e-mail and cruising the Internet.

The book's co-author, Mauricio Aranguren Molina, expresses unease about his 
protagonist as he summarizes the paramilitary leader's trail of bloodshed. 
Under other circumstances, he writes, "Carlos Castano could be Satan."

Mr. Castano acknowledges that he ordered the assassination in 1990 of a 
popular presidential candidate, Carlos Pizarro, the former leader of the 
guerrilla group M-19. The rebels had agreed to surrender weapons and abide 
by the democratic process, but Mr. Pizarro's assassination, along with 
others, convinced other guerrilla groups that the government was never to 
be trusted.

"Pizarro had to die," Mr. Castano declares in the book, in which he accuses 
the presidential candidate of being allied with Pablo Escobar, a late drug 
kingpin who once had ordered the assassination of Mr. Castano.

Today, Colombia remains immersed in war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces 
of Colombia, or FARC, largely because of the killing rampage that Mr. 
Castano initiated.

"I can take responsibility for the execution of 30 or 40 guerrillas, 
outside of combat," after they attempted to reintegrate themselves in the 
democratic process, Mr. Castano says.

He also says he ordered the assassinations of Sen. Manuel Cepeda in 1994 
and congressman Jairo Rojas in 1999 because he deemed them to be 
sympathetic to guerrilla causes.

Mr. Castano got his start as a paramilitary activist in the late 1980s, 
when he helped put together a private military force to protect the assets 
of Medellin cocaine cartel leader Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, who declared war 
on the FARC when its guerrillas robbed him of 440 pounds of cocaine.

Mr. Rodriguez Gacha paid for Mr. Castano and other paramilitary leaders to 
be trained by former British and Israeli special forces troops under the 
direction of Yair Klein, an Israeli mercenary, Mr. Castano says.

In the book, the paramilitary leader described how he attained additional 
military prowess during a 14-month military training program in Israel 
during the early 1980s. "To that country I owe part of my culture, my 
military and human achievements," he says, adding that the Israelis taught 
him how to procure arms on international markets, how to make bombs, and 
how to assassinate.

Monsignor Duarte said that, over the years, he had arranged ultra-secret 
meetings between various top government officials and Mr. Castano.

He saved the lives of guerrilla leaders' relatives who had been kidnapped 
by Mr. Castano. He put his own life, as well as those of some Catholic 
priests, at risk to maintain the secret relationship that addressed so many 
humanitarian causes.

"This hurts me because it makes me look like I'm a friend of Carlos 
Castano," he said after reading part of the book.

He said he feared that Colombian guerrillas might retaliate.

Mr. Castano makes clear, however, that the monsignor was heavily critical 
of the paramilitaries and did not hesitate to condemn the group publicly, 
as he did the guerrillas.

But the bishop ran his fingers through his graying hair as he considered 
whether Mr. Castano's rejoinders would help his own case. After a long 
pause, he responded, "This is going to cause me many, many problems."
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