The Center for Public Integrity

Latest from the Center Latest from the Center

  1. December 15, 1997

    ICIJ Member Works: “This War Can’t Go on Any Longer” — Carlos Castaño

    BOGOTA, Colombia, December 15, 1997 — In an exclusive interview with Cambio16, the commander of the self-defense leagues says that “the final onslaught” is underway. He maintains that peace negotiations are imminent and that the guerrilla groups will have to request the presence of the self-defense leagues at the negotiating table. Castaño also states that, if this is not the case, paramilitary forces will attack guerrilla members after their “reinsertion” into society. Read more

  2. July 28, 1997

    ICIJ Member Works: Mapiripan: A Shortcut to Hell

    BOGOTA, July 28, 1997 — A paramilitary incursion from July 14 to 20 this year by private armed groups that combat guerrilla forces has made this municipality in the Colombia Plains Region into a mere ghost town though it was once a center of subversive influence of the FARC ( "The Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces"), that country's oldest guerrilla group. Fear runs so rampant in this little village that even the special Prosecutors sent to investigate the massacre have felt its sting, as evidenced by their managing to take testimony in a record five (5) hours without once venturing forth from the Mayor's Offices. According to a military source, the Army received information on the presence of paramilitary groups in the region on July 14, the very same day that 120 or 150 armed men marched into the town of Mapiripan. The town's penal municipal judge, Leonardo Iván Cortés-Novoa, called the Army battalion commander in charge of the area eight (8) times to ask for assistance. Nevertheless, the army waited until July 21 to send in troops, after 25 of the townspeople had been torn limb from limb while still alive, according to Cortés and other residents who saw the victims forced into the town's slaughterhouse. Those present claim that members of the par amilitary groups savagely dismembered their friends with knives and machetes, throwing the severed arms and legs into the turbulent waters of the Guaviare River, which borders the town. Read more

Most Popular
Sign Up

Receive important updates by e-mail.

User Log In



Forget your password?

User registration

Become a fan
image Follow the Center

Stay Connected

Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter and get the latest from our in-depth investigations, articles, interviews, blogs, videos, and more.

Support the Center

Your support will help us bring you more investigations, articles, interviews and news related materials relevant to U.S. politics and politics abroad.

Donate

About the Center

The Center for Public Integrity is dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern in the USA and around the world.

More about the Center

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

The Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is a collaboration of some of the world’s leading investigative reporters. ICIJ extends globally the Center’s style of watchdog journalism, working with 100 reporters in 50 countries to produce long-term, transnational projects.

ICIJ website