An international warrant for three Israeli citizens was issued from the Interpol headquarters in Lion: Yair Klein, Melik Ferry e Tzedaka Abraham are accused of having trained during the 90s an unknown number of farmers in order to transform them into far right paramilitaries ready to kill.

The charge. The Court in Manizales asked for the warrant. During the 60s in Colombia, soldiers and ex foreign soldiers signed many contracts with the now disappeared Medellín Cartel, run by the infamous drug trafficker Pablo Escobar. These people were recruited as mercenaries for the illegal squads, formed to run the drug trafficking and to handle with the left wing guerrilla warfare. The investigation is based precisely on these contracts. A particular reference is made to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the best organized and biggest extreme right organization in the country, accused of murders, tortures and forced evacuations.

The Confession. One of the accused did not reject the charges against him. Yar Klein, a former colonel of Israeli army, admitted he trained extremist reactionary squads to fight against Colombian revolutionary armed forces and the army for National Liberation Army but denied he has ever worked for drug cartels. He made this admission during a talk at the network Caracol and Klein, previously sentenced in Tel Aviv for gun traffic with illegal Colombian groups, made clear that ‘They were not trained to kill, just to defend themselves’.

Who are the paramilitaries? Although the majority of the members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia are taking part in the desmantling plan as the president Alvaro Uribe required with the Justice and Peace law, the organization is still alive, prevailing upon any drug cartel or any local boss. The AUC has become very powerful organization, touching with its tentacles every one of the three powers. Paramilitarism is involved in the legislative, in the executive and the judiciary, rigging laws, decisions and trials. In the last months there was a scandal in this ‘para-politics’, that filled the prisons with MPs, administrators and secret agents who worked with the paramilitary groups and that brought to light the names of multinationals who financed the illegal squads. This series of scandals is bringing Colombians’ trust in the government down to the historical minimum.

The tip of the iceberg. Six MPs members of the majority party have been convicted of creation of paramilitary groups, drug trade and murder together with Jorge Noguera, former director of DAS (the secret police of the government) and consul of Milan. He is accused of being responsible for murders of many social activists, of election fraud (when he was regional director of the first presidential campaing of the president), of money laundering in drug traffic and to maintain relations with some of the most powerful paramilitary bosses in the Caribbean coast. President Uribe has already lost his reputation for Noguera: ‘I do trust him’, he said in November in his defence. The news that six mayor of an oil-rich region and farmers have been arrested because they supported paramilitary bosses spreaded yesterday. But this seems to be only the tip of the iceberg and new suspects come up every day.