Colombia Warlord Salvatore Mancuso, Responsible for Having Hundreds of People Killed, Freed From Colombian Prison

By Rick Martin Jul 10 2024, 21:34 PM EDT

INPEC, the prison authority in Colombia, has announced that Salvatore Mancuso, a Colombian warlord accused of Crimes Against Humanity, is now a free man.

The release came after a Bogota judge confirmed that no judicial authority objected to the release of the man accused of killing hundreds of people suspected to be communist rebels while he led the paramilitary organization AUC.

Until just recently, Mancuso was spending 18 years jail time in the United States for drug trafficking. He was found guilty of smuggling cocaine from Colombia to fund his war against the various leftist rebel groups that were fighting the Colombian government.

After his prison term was finished, Mancuso was deported back to Colombia where he appeared before various courts. There, the courts notified corrections authorities that they no longer had any pending detention orders for the notorious warlord, according to the Associated Pres.

Despite this, however, the courts still judged the warlord "responsible for more than 1,500 acts of murder and disappearances" during the period of the country's decades-long armed conflict, where the government fought against various left-wing and even right-wing groups.

While he has been condemned for his crimes against humanity, Colombia's various human rights organizations, as well as government officials, have expressed hope that with the government granting him his freedom, he would cooperate with authorities regarding the crimes committed during the tumultuous period when paramilitary groups fought leftist rebels in rural Colombia in the 1990s and early 2000s.

While he was still in US custody, Mancuso had multiple hearings with judges back in Colombia via teleconference. During these hearings, he spoke of his group's dealings with politicians and even said some high-ranking politicians were involved in war crimes.

Colombia Warlord Salvatore Mancuso Vowed To Take Part in Peace Building

Even though Mancuso has been freed by Colombian officials, INPEC will continue monitoring his whereabouts to make sure he will cooperate with the justice system and root out the politicians who helped him commit war crimes when he was still the leader of the AUC.

According to Colombia Reports, Mancuso's crimes are being tried by the country's war crimes tribunal known as Justice and Peace (JEC), and his crimes are leading to the investigation of crimes committed by the armed forces. One of the people he stated was responsible for some of these war crimes was former President Alvaro Uribe.

Who Is Colombia Warlord Salvatore Mancuso?

Salvatore Mancuso is a dual citizen of both Italy and Colombia. Before taking up arms, he was a rancher who got fed up by leftist guerilla groups extorting them. He soon joined paramilitary militias before going up the ranks and becoming a commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

His right-wing paramilitary group had been very active in its fight against leftist rebel groups from the 1990s to the early 2000s. As commander, he used his paramilitary organization to assassinate social leaders and even killed civilians. According to El Pais, Mancuso even admitted that some soldiers accompanied him on kidnappings, with these security forces not even trying to stop the massacres they were committing.

To fund his activities, he took to drug trafficking. This eventually led to his downfall as he was imprisoned in the US before being deported back to Colombia.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

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