Paramilitary Leader Submits to Justice

Seeking 'Real Truth,' Victims Gather For Testimony on Colombian Violence

MEDELLIN, Colombia, Dec. 19 -- Some came to the Palace of Justice on Tuesday with huge color photographs of their loved ones strapped around their necks. Others wore T-shirts that read "Justice" and "Truth." Maria Eugenia Cobaleda, whose two older brothers were kidnapped in 1998 and never seen again, summed up the prevailing mood.

"We're waiting to have them tell us the real truth, no matter how much it hurts," she said.

They all came to press for answers from Salvatore Mancuso, the first commander from Colombia's paramilitary organization to submit himself to justice.

The strapping commander, known as "Blondie" to his friends but as a mass murderer to human rights groups, sat in a hearing room Tuesday, rattling off key events in his life while leaving out his complicity in the more unpleasant chapters, according to victims who heard the testimony. The proceedings were closed to the public.

The deposition was a sputtering start in a specially tailored judicial process designed to ferret out crimes committed by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, an umbrella group known by the Spanish initials AUC. It was financed largely by ranchers and landowners to counter guerrilla groups espousing Marxist ideology.

To secure benefits, such as avoiding extradition to the United States on drug charges and ensuring short terms of incarceration on farms, commanders must confess to crimes and pay reparations to victims.

In Mancuso the victims have a man they consider the personification of evil. In 2003, a judge sentenced him to 40 years in prison for arranging the 1997 massacre of at least 15 people in the town of El Aro. Warrants have been issued for his arrest in selective assassinations, as well as other mass killings in villages.

The country's attorney general, Mario Iguaran, told El Espectador newspaper that 1,200 people had complained to prosecutors about crimes Mancuso allegedly committed.

Sitting next to a prosecutor in the hearing room, occasionally sipping from a bottle of water, Mancuso cast himself more as victim than victimizer, said Teresita Gaviria, who represents a group of mothers of victims.

He recounted how his father arrived in Colombia from Italy to make a new life. He said his family, like many others in rural Cordoba state, was targeted by the Marxist guerrillas. He spoke of how he and other ranchers took matters into their own hands, on grounds that the police and army did little to protect the citizenry.

That was as far as he went, said victims and other observers who watched the deposition in two hearing rooms equipped with closed-circuit televisions. He justified the actions of the paramilitaries by saying that "the bullets we fired carried a hope for change," said Carlos Ivan Lopera, who represents a human rights group, Redepaz.

Then Mancuso broke down and cried, just before the afternoon televised newscasts, which went live with the news. "He asked for forgiveness for the tears he's caused," Lopera recounted.