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August 25, 2005
Alberto Gonzales, meet "Gordo Lindo"
Yesterday, U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales was in Bogotá praising the Uribe government to the skies, calling Colombia a “beacon to the world.”
Gonzales emphasized the Colombian government’s increased willingness to extradite drug suspects to the United States.
Extradition is a critical tool for both our countries in the battle to ensure that criminals are brought to justice. The extradition partnership the United States has with Colombia is the best we have in the world. This important relationship enables both countries to deal effectively and forcefully with serious criminal organizations and individuals.
Well, not all serious criminal organizations and individuals.
At the same time Gonzales was making his remarks, the main front of the AUC’s Pacific Bloc was demobilizing, in a ceremony presided over by a longtime narcotrafficker who, though indicted by a U.S. court, is unlikely ever to face U.S. justice.
The front’s 150 members turned in 144 weapons Tuesday in the department of Chocó. They did so in the presence of their “political chief,” Francisco Javier Zuluaga Lindo, known as “Gordo Lindo” (which translates as “fat pretty man”).
Zuluaga himself will formally demobilize on Saturday. When he does, it will be a major victory for all Colombian narcotraffickers who joined the AUC in the hope of avoiding extradition to the United States.
The 35-year-old Zuluaga does not have a long history in the AUC, though he has been in the drug-trafficking business since the days of the Medellín cartel fifteen or so years ago. He was part of the organization of Medellín cartel figures Fabio and Jorge Ochoa. Later, after the Medellín and Cali cartels disappeared, he worked with Alejandro “Juvenal” Bernal Madrigal, one of the largest drug-traffickers of the late 1990s. Zuluaga narrowly escaped capture in 1999, when “Juvenal” was arrested in “Operation Millennium,” a major DEA-Colombian Police sting operation. Since then, he has been a fugitive, maintaining ties to the country’s largest drug organization, the Northern Valle cartel. In 1999, a court in Fort Lauderdale indicted him for narcotrafficking.
None of this stopped him from winning a position in the AUC. About three years ago, just as the Uribe government was beginning its negotiations with the paramilitaries, AUC leader Diego Fernando Murillo (“Don Berna,” another recently arrived paramilitary with a long history in the drug underworld) made him the political chief of the Pacific Bloc, which operates in the departments of Chocó and Valle del Cauca (from just south of Panama to just south of Cali).
Colombian Senator Jimmy Chamorro denounced this week that “Gordo Lindo” paid $5 million for his paramilitary status. He “opened his checkbook and bought a franchise to convert himself from a narcotrafficker into a paramilitary chief. This cannot be allowed.”
Zuluaga’s tenuous status in the AUC was evidenced by this bizarre exchange with Pacific Bloc commander “Johnatan Guevara” on Tuesday on Colombia’s “La W” radio network, reported by El Tiempo.
The man who answered the call not only denied having participated in the drug business but also denied that “Gordo Lindo” is the maximum leader of the “Pacific”: “Since the process began, many people who are commanders have come to Ralito [the zone where negotiations have taken place]. … We didn’t even know their names, and we’ve only seen them for the first time now.”
He added that “Zuluaga has not been in this zone. We have nothing to do with him. No narcotrafficking has happened here,” said the man, with a Chocó accent.
Minutes later, one of the reporters [from “La W”] received a call. It was “Comandante Johnatan,” asking to rectify the comments that had been transmitted over “La W” about the Pacific Bloc and its relationship with “Gordo Lindo.”
… “I think one of the muchachos who picked up my phone thought someone was playing a practical joke. He never thought that it would be the press, so he started to say stupid things,” assured “Johnatan Guevara,” military chief of the Pacific Bloc.
The new incident reinforced doubts about the status of Francisco Javier Zuluaga, alias “Gordo Lindo,” as a true paramilitary chief, instead of a narco-trafficker who “parachuted” into the ranks of the AUC.
… Another interview was arranged, which was to take place on the same cellphone. But the paramilitary chief never answered again.
As a demobilizing paramilitary, “Gordo Lindo” will benefit from the very lenient so-called “Justice and Peace” law that the Colombian Congress narrowly passed, at the Uribe government’s urging, in June. He will be required to confess to past crimes, including narcotrafficking, which he will argue was fundraising for the paramilitary cause. For his misdeeds he will be sentenced to 5 to 8 years – really 3 ½ to 6 ½ years, subtracting time spent negotiating – in a “prison” that might actually be house arrest at a rural estate.
Having paid this light penalty, “Gordo Lindo” may not be extradited, as under Colombian law this would be “double jeopardy” – being punished twice for the same crime. The “Justice and Peace” law also considers paramilitarism to be a “political crime,” which the Colombian Constitution states is not an extraditable offense; if Zuluaga’s lawyers can argue that his narcotrafficking was “connected” to the political crime of paramilitarism, he may not be extradited for his drug-dealing.
According to Senator Chamorro, with the cases of “Gordo Lindo” and other narcos-turned-paramilitary-leaders, “the government has made extradition into a huge joke.”
Yesterday, Colombian reporters did ask Attorney-General Gonzales whether the cases of “Gordo Lindo” and other paramilitary traffickers don’t call into question the U.S.-Colombian “extradition partnership” he had praised so highly in his comments. He responded vaguely: “Our general objective is to bring to justice any person who commits crimes against the American people, or who carries out criminal activities against U.S. interests.”
What is happening right now with “Gordo Lindo” and other demobilizing AUC leaders violates that “general objective” in both letter and spirit. Yet the U.S. Attorney-General, our maximum law-enforcement official, did not condemn it when given an opportunity to do so.
Why, then, did he bother to visit Bogotá?
Posted by isacson at August 25, 2005 12:37 PM
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Comments
Probably to talk about that same subject, but perhaps under different terms and with different options than those that make up most of the "politically correct" (the so called "general objective") discussion on the matter.
Posted by: jcg at August 25, 2005 08:16 PM
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