Colombia will soon know whether the US Government’s human rights concerns are genuine or just talk.
Washington DC’s credibility depend on the State Department, which could request the extradition of Dario Antonio Usuga, a.k.a. “Otoniel,” on drug trafficking charges.
The arrested commander of paramilitary group AGC has already been sentenced to more than 90 years in prison in Colombia because of his crimes against humanity.
Otoniel has also been accused of drug trafficking in Colombia, but who cares if the AGC chief is also accused of terrorism , multiple homicides and sexually abusing minors?
You don’t have to be a human rights defender to believe that extraditing Otoniel to try the guy for drug trafficking doesn’t make any sense.
You also don’t need to be a lawyer to understand that the guy who committed the Charleston church massacre shouldn’t be sentenced to community service for allegedly smoking pot.
To come up with shit like that you’d have to either be criminally insane or a politician, which seems to be the problem in Bogota and Washington DC.
At least 70 Colombian congressmen and governors went to prison as a consequence of the demobilization of the AGC’s predecessor, the AUC, between 2003 and 2008.
Former President Alvaro Uribe, the political patron of President Ivan Duque, extradited 14 AUC commanders to the US in 2008 alone.
These extraditions kept a lot of so-called “good Colombians” out of prison but left 200,000 victims without justice, according to legal experts and victims’ organizations.
Extradition forms part of the Colombian government strategy… to frustrate the rights of victims, and promote impunity for those most responsible for the crimes committed by paramilitary groups over the past 25 years: politicians at local, regional and national level, members of the Colombian Armed Forces, State officials, corporations and large landowners.
Judicial experts and victim organizations
I have never been to America, so I can only guess why the US Government was giving green cards to drug traffickers and terrorists while wasting tax payers’ money on things like a “War on Drugs” and a War on Terror.”
I did learn that you can’t trust American politicians because they’re full of shit.
If the US Government really cares about this thing called “human rights” in Colombia, all it has to do is to not pursue the extradition of those who violate human rights.
