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a story has just broken in Bogotá which threatens to confirm allegations that they conspire with the United Self-defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) - an illegal paramilitary army headed by the country's most feared warlord, Carlos Castaño - to carry out massacres and terrorise farmers and villagers.The man at the eye of the storm is former army general Jaime Alberto Uscátegui, who is awaiting trial for his participation in a gruesome paramilitary atrocity. In the tragic annals of Colombian atrocities there have been too many massacres, but events in the southern jungle town of Mapiripán in July 1997 haunt the Colombian collective memory with a particularly painful intensity. Uscátegui is accused of supporting the paramilitaries as they spent five days and nights terrorising the town, torturing more than thirty people to death and dismembering their victims alive in the municipal slaughterhouse.
Now, according to Bogotá's weekly news magazine Cambio, Uscátegui has put his military superiors on notice. From his quiet prison cell at an army base in the capital, the general has said that unless his superiors help him avoid jail, he will go public with documentary evidence of a policy of official military collusion with paramilitary terror.
As reported by Cambio, the documents in Uscátegui's possession were retrieved from an army computer belonging to a military intelligence agent and equipped with a special password used in all communications between the army and the paramilitaries.
According to the general, the material includes pamphlets produced at battalion headquarters and handed out by the paramilitaries at Mapiripán and other massacre sites, the rules of paramilitary engagement as drafted and drawn up by the army, and a complete list - including names and aliases - of all 93 members of the AUC front that committed the Mapiripán massacre. The latter item also contains the payroll and individual monthly salaries for all the members of the front, together with their rank and responsibilities.