Extradited paramilitary leader Ramiro “Cucoy Vanoy” Murillo is charged by Colombian prosecutors with 192 separate criminal acts, including torture and murder, Spanish news agency reported EFE Thursday.
The eight-day-long hearing ended with the court’s decision to accuse Vanoy of “192 acts of homicide, forced disappearances, torture, forced displacement, kidnapping, theft and conspiracy, among others.”
Within these acts are “231 cases of homicide and the forced disappearance of public servants, labor leaders and members of the Patriotic Union,” according to a statement from the prosecution.
The Patriotic Union was the political arm of the FARC, created in 1985 during a failed cease-fire with the government at the time. The formation of the political party exposed the FARC’s leaders, members and supporters to a campaign of extermination that killed more than 4,000 people, including presidential candidates, at the hands of paramilitaries and state agents.
The other acts he has been accused of include seven massacres which ended in the death of 56 Colombians in various towns throughout the Antioquia department, and the recruitment of 327 children.
Vanoy was the former head of the “Bloque Mineros” group of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an umbrella organization of regional far-right paramilitary groups created in 1997 and dissolved in 2006 under a peace process with the government of former President Alvaro Uribe.
Vanoy was extradited to the U.S., along with other former leaders of the AUC and is currently being held in a Florida prison.
