Haaretz: Castano Under U.S. Protection

Carlos Castano, a right-wing militia leader in Colombia, was recently smuggled into Israel, AFP reported Tuesday. But Israeli Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry officials who checked this story said they found no evidence that Castano had entered Israel. They noted, however, that it is possible that he entered the country under a different name.

The militia leader disappeared from Colombia on February 16 after the country's militias agreed to a government demand to disband. Castano, 39, was first moved to Panama under American guard and then sent to Israel, according to the French news agency's report. The Colombian government refused to confirm or deny this report...

Castano apparently left Colombia because he had become associated with the United States' efforts to combat the country's illicit drug business and his life was threatened. Another militia leader was murdered several days ago after being suspected of similar cooperation with the Americans.

Carlos Castano, founder of the Colombian paramilitary death squad movement known as AUC (United Self-defense Forces of Colombia), is the kingpin behind more massacres, assassinations, drug trafficking, and other crimes than any other Latin American alive today.

The reported possibility that he is in some kind of witness protection program of the United States is primarily disturbing because there is absolutely no possible criminal "above" him that his testimony would be useful in trapping. Castano is the boss, the region's biggest war criminal of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries.

Castano is a wanted fugitive in the United States and Colombia. His organization is on the U.S. State Department list of "international terrorist organizations," and shares responsibility for 85 percent of the massacres and human rights violations in Colombia. When Colin Powell announced, in 2001, that Castano's organization would be classified as terrorist, many observers felt it was a media stunt: Castano has always done the dirty work of Washington's dirty war against social movements in Colombia.

Indeed, Castano is the pioneer and intellectual author of the Bush doctrine ("if you are not with us, you are terrorists"). He is, as Narco News reported in 2000, a year before Washington declared him a terrorist, a narco-trafficking kingpin, too. (Castano responded to our report at the time with a public attack against Narco News, via the AUC website, calling us "the narco media," using language that some observers felt had signaled a call to assassinate our journalists. Needless to say, we pushed on with the story.)

In April 2003, investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood published a report on Narco News documenting Castano's long history with, and support from, the Israeli government. “I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis,” wrote Castano in his 2002 autobiography.

If he is enjoying his exile in Israel, that would not be a surprise to informed observers.

But if that exile was organized by, and conducted under the protection of, the United States government, as the French Press Agency (AFP) reports, then it makes a lie of U.S. claims to consider Castano and his organization as "international terrorists," and, worse, makes the United States government in violation of its own laws prohibiting material support for those classified as "terrorists."

We ask again: Who are the terrorists here?