paramilitaries in Colombia

There were few other places they could go without running the risk of being robbed, kidnapped, or perhaps murdered, either by one of Colombia's several Marxist guerrilla groups, its right-wing paramilitary militias, or its criminal gangs. Cartagena was an exception to all that, but it still had its seamy side.

More than 800 businesses sponsored paramilitary groups that committed tens of thousands of human right violations in Colombia, in most cases without consequence, according to a recent report. The report was published by Colombian think tank Dejusticia, Oxford University and other investigators after a ...

When people think about violence in Colombia, the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia's (FARC) guerrillas might come to mind. But fewer know about the paramilitary forces that killed, tortured, and raped their way across the country starting in the late 1990s.

A new report examines the relationship between private businesses and paramilitary groups during Colombia's decades-long armed conflict, arguing that a post-conflict truth commission should investigate these potentially criminal dealings. The report, published on February 26 by Colombian think tank ...

By January, at least 550,000 Venezuelans were officially residing in Colombia, with nearly half arriving last year alone, according to Colombian officials. Most are fleeing their country's economic meltdown – one of the world's largest migrations unassociated with conflict. The pace picked up in the last six ...

5, 1998, and he was setting off with a friend on the nine-hour drive from his hometown of Medellin to the Colombian capital, Bogota. ... The paramilitaries disarmed more than a decade ago but now it is the turn of the Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials ...

Seven suspected Colombian paramilitaries were killed in a confrontation with Venezuelan security forces in Tachira state on the border, an official said on Thursday. The incident in La Cabrera -- which borders the Colombian department of Norte de Santander -- involved "the Colombian 'Los Pelusos' ...

Colombia's largest illegal armed group, the AGC, vows to “design and construct a new country” in an apparent withdrawal from its intent to surrender to justice. The Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces (AGC) said so in a recently published “coexistence manual,” which laid out the social order imposed on ...

To escape starvation, many families and unaccompanied children are fleeing into Colombia where they are at risk of kidnapping and exploitation from ... Save the Children is concerned about the plight of unaccompanied children crossing the border, where they are vulnerable to paramilitaries or armed ...

What role did drugs play on the FARC side and the government side of the bloody Colombian conflict? Colombia's internal war technically started in the 1960s; it involved left-wing guerrillas (of which the most prominent have been the FARC) fighting against government forces. Paramilitaries also existed in ...

In less than 10 years, Colombia's largest drug trafficking organization, the AGC, has grown from 80 paramilitary fighters to a criminal powerhouse of more than ... According to Colombian think tank, Fundacion, Paz y Reconciliacion, the group controls nearly half of all cocaine that leaves the nation's borders.