Colombia has it in for Hollywood's ultimate tough guy. Andres Pastrana, the country's ambassador in Washington, has scolded actor Bruce Willis for suggesting the United States should consider invading Colombia as part of its war on drugs. At a media event in New York to promote his new film, 16 Blocks, Willis said the United States should weigh "going to Colombia and doing whatever it takes to end the cocaine trade". Willis's comments, on screen and off, have landed him in trouble before. [continues 57 words]
PIVIJAY, Colombia - As some 23,000 paramilitary fighters have disarmed here over the last two years, their top commanders have declared their intentions to play a role in politics. But signs are emerging that the role is a dark one, as commanders use bribery and intimidation to control local lawmakers and even blocs of representatives in the Congress while they reshape their militias into criminal networks that traffic in cocaine, extort businesses and loot local governments. Warnings of these activities have come from sources as varied as Colombian politicians, the United Nations, Western diplomats and human rights groups. Colombia's Supreme Court has begun investigating ties between paramilitaries and Congress, and some parties have begun expelling representatives with links to the groups. [continues 980 words]
Colombia's Air Force Has Begun Strafing And Bombing A National Park Where FARC Rebels Are Growing Coca And Destroying Rain Forest BOGOTA - Colombia's air force said Friday it has begun strafing and bombing a national park where rebels have killed a dozen police who were working to clear the mountainous jungle reserve of plants used to make cocaine. Air Force Gen. Flavio Ulloa told The Associated Press that the bombing campaign was aimed at camps where rebels with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are known to be hiding out. He said the results of late Thursday's first attacks involving planes and helicopters were still not known. [continues 210 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Hundreds of paramilitary fighters handed in their weapons and renounced violence Wednesday in a ceremony in southern Colombia, the country's peace commissioner said. Separately, the U.S. Embassy in Colombia said it would not penalize companies for hiring former members of armed groups that Washington considers terrorist organizations _ a declaration that may help the fighters abandon warfare and crime. The 552 combatants who disarmed were members of the Central Bolivar Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, considered by the United States as a terrorist organization with links to major drug traffickers. [continues 151 words]
Traffickers Are Using More And More Human 'Mules' To Transport Drugs BOGOTA - While news that drug traffickers used puppies to transport drugs was shocking, the number of human "mules" may be rising, according to statistics from the Colombian police and an analyst at the University of Miami. Traffickers have long employed creative methods for transporting drugs. The United States Drug Enforcement Administration revealed recently that a heroin ring used dogs to ship its product to the United States. But Colombian police said it had captured 143 "mules" in 2004 and 189 in 2005, suggesting the increased reliance of traffickers on humans to transport their drugs. All of these "mules" were trafficking drugs inside their bodies. [continues 309 words]
Colombian drug dealers turned purebred puppies into drug couriers by surgically implanting them with packets of liquid heroin, US authorities said today. Ten puppies were rescued during a 2004 raid on a farm in Colombia, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said while announcing arrests in the two-year investigation. A veterinarian had stitched a total of three kg of heroin into the bellies of six pups. Three later died from infection after the drugs were removed. The surviving dogs "are still alive and well, we're told," said John Gilbride, head of the DEA's New York office. [continues 152 words]
BOGOTA -- President Alvaro Uribe, clad in a tropical guaya-bera shirt, uprooted coca plants alongside workers Monday while visiting a massive eradication effort in a national park. Last week, 930 government-hired peasants, protected by some 3,000 troops, descended on Sierra Macarena National Park, 170 kilometers (105 miles) south of Bogota, manually pull up coca -- the key ingredient in cocaine -- from some 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres) of land. The manual eradication effort is the biggest in the country's history, a complex military and logistical mission that is expected to last up to four months. [continues 148 words]
Workers Uproot Coca Crop In Park, Know To Drop At Sound Of Gunfire SIERRA MACARENA NATIONAL PARK, Colombia - The war on drugs doesn't get more hands-on than this. Nearly a thousand government workers descended on this rebel-controlled nature preserve Thursday to begin manually uprooting some 11,000 acres of coca plants used to make cocaine. About 3,000 soldiers provided security for the risky operation -- a slow and costly program reflecting the difficulty of winning the U.S.-funded war on drugs. Authorities said they expect the eradication teams to finish the job in three months. [continues 416 words]
VISTA HERMOSA, Colombia -- Fourteen guerrillas and two soldiers were killed in clashes in an area of southern Colombia that the government is trying to clear of rebels before launching a coca-eradication campaign, an army spokesman said. Fighting between the army and a faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Colombia's oldest guerrilla group, broke out on the edge of Sierra Macarena National Park, not far from where 29 soldiers were killed by the rebels last month. [continues 228 words]
Two Colombian soldiers have been arrested for giving weapons to leftist rebels -- their main battlefield enemy -- in exchange for cocaine, the Attorney General's Office said on Friday. The soldiers, in addition to being members of the Medellin-based 4th Brigade, belonged to a criminal ring that included fighters with the country's main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said the prosecutors' office in a statement. The statement did not say when the two were arrested, but an official said they were captured "in the past several weeks." [continues 168 words]
PEREIRA, Colombia - Armando Garces was reluctant to leave his mountain village even after right-wing militia members had gone door to door telling residents they had 48 hours to evacuate, or else. He didn't like being ordered to abandon the only home he had ever known. Then a daylong gun battle erupted between the paramilitary fighters and leftist guerrillas over control of nearby coca crops and transit routes. Garces' town -- Bajo Calima, nestled in Colombia's Pacific coast rain forest -- was caught in the cross fire between the rebels above the town and militia members below it. [continues 684 words]
BOGOTA, Colombia - A new soft drink made in Colombia may not be cola, but it's definitely coca. A Nasa Indian company in southern Colombia has created a golden, carbonated drink made from coca leaf extract, and it plans to market it as an alternative to Coca-Cola. Coca Sek goes on sale this week in parts of Colombia, but its makers say they probably won't be able to export to the U.S. or most other countries because of rules blocking the entry of raw coca, the plant from which cocaine is refined. [continues 457 words]
BOGOTA, Columbia -- A new soft drink made in Colombia may not be cola, but it's definitely coca. A Nasa Indian company in southern Colombia has created a golden, carbonated drink made from coca leaf extract, and they plan to market it as an alternative to Coca-Cola. Coca Sek goes on sale this week in parts of Colombia, but its makers say they probably won't be able to export to the U.S. or most other countries because of rules blocking the entry of raw coca, the plant from which cocaine is refined. [continues 627 words]
Bogota, Colombia -- A U.S. government report to be released next week raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-drug campaign in Colombia, despite moves by the Bush administration to extend the program. The 52-page report by the Government Accountability Office, an advance copy of which has been obtained by The Chronicle, challenges administration conclusions that the drug interdiction effort known as Plan Colombia -- a five-year program that ends this year -- has reduced the amount of cocaine available in the United States. [continues 1055 words]
Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shut down an international heroin trafficking ring and arrested 63 suspects in near-simultaneous raids in Colombia and the USA, authorities said Wednesday. The network smuggled heroin into the USA on speedboats and also used passengers on commercial airlines carrying suitcases with hidden compartments, the Colombian attorney general's office said in a statement. The DEA said the smugglers also concealed heroin in the lining of clothes, the soles of shoes and the frames of paintings. [continues 52 words]
Colombians Struggled to Save Their National Parks From Both Sides Of the Cocaine War, Which Rely on Toxic Chemicals That Pollute the Environment SAN FRANCISCO, Colombia - Arturo Avi is a typical small farmer in Colombia in many respects: He's a short, sun-tanned man who barely ekes out a living by growing corn, yuca, rice, raspberries -- and coca, the raw material for cocaine. Like the others, he worries about the government's massive campaign to spray herbicides on coca farms. But he's got an advantage: His plot lies inside a national park, where the aerial spraying has been prohibited for years. [continues 1114 words]
"The Better We Get At Catching Them," A U.S. Official Said, "The More Creative They Get." BOGOTA, Colombia - The six puppies looked fine at first. But when police gave them a closer look, they found fresh scars on their bellies that told a different story. The tiny Labradors and rottweilers had been surgically converted into drug couriers, cut open, with several packets of heroin stitched into their abdomens. Even Colombia's hardened police, who found the puppies at an abandoned house outside Medellin, had never seen anything like it. Traffickers were apparently going to ship the dogs to the United States saying they were pets. It is almost certain that they would have been discarded as soon as their valuable cargo was removed. [continues 850 words]
PUERTO ARTURO, Colombia - Cocaine is killing the great nature parks of Colombia. Government spraying of coca-plant killer is driving growers and traffickers out of their usual territory into national parks where spraying is banned. Here they are burning thousands of acres of virgin rain forest and poisoning rivers with chemicals. Now the government faces a painful dilemma: to spray weedkiller would be devastating, but the impact of coca-growing is increasingly destructive. The question is, which is worse? Colombia is home to about 15 percent of all the world's plant species and one of its most diverse arrays of amphibians, mammals and birds. [continues 589 words]
Growers Begin Using Areas Protected by Law PUERTO ARTURO - Cocaine is killing the great nature parks of Colombia. Government spraying of coca plant killer is driving growers and traffickers out of their usual territory into national parks where spraying is banned. Here they are burning thousands of acres of virgin rain forest and poisoning rivers with chemicals. Now the government faces a painful dilemma: to spray weed killer would be devastating, but the impact of coca-growing is increasingly destructive. The question is, which is worse? [continues 546 words]
Diego Fernando Murillo, a paramilitary commander being held in comfort on a sprawling ranch, has been transferred to Combita, one of Colombia's toughest prisons, President Alvaro Uribe announced. The abrupt transfer came a day after Mr. Uribe said Mr. Murillo, known as Don Berna, could avoid extradition to New York on drug trafficking charges if he adhered to a pact governing the disarmament of thousands of paramilitary fighters. The Bush administration has strongly backed Mr. Uribe's dealing with the paramilitaries, but federal prosecutors in New York have been pushing for Mr. Murillo to be extradited to face cocaine-trafficking charges. [end]
Inside Colombia
