(US RESPONSIBLE) Connecting the Dots: Colombian Army officers and civilian killings  http://forusa.org/blogs/john-lindsay-poland/connecting-dots-colombian-army-officers-civilian-killings/9702 A Colombian Army officer charged with multiple civilian killings, known as “false positives,” this month publicly charged the commander of the U.S.-assisted unit – General Javier Fernández Leal - with collaborating in the killings. Fernández Leal has been promoted to chief of joint intelligence for the Colombian military. The accusing officer, ex-captain Antonio Rozo Valbuena, served in a unit created in 2006 to combat kidnapping (known as GAULA for its Spanish initials) in 41 counties in the northern department of Córdoba, but its members ended up kidnapping and killing civilians themselves.     Acuña received training at the School of the Americas, not once but twice, in 1992 and 1995, including a course in leadership and counter-drug operations. He was sentenced in June 2009 to 28 years in prison for the killings, but a second court in Córdoba overturned the conviction in 2010. The 11^th Brigade in Córdoba, of which the GAULA unit was part, was commanded by then-Colonel Fernández Leal from June 2005 to December 2006. Three months before ascending to command the 11^th Brigade, Fernández Leal was studying at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, where he wrote about the costs of the war in Colombia.The United States assisted the 11^th Brigade during this period and beyond – in 2005, 2006 and 2007, according to a State Department list of assisted units (pdf, 1.6MB)Fernández Leal subsequently sat on a military panel that in 2009 stymied investigations into false positives, according to statements by the former Army Inspector General to U.S. Embassy officials, revealed in a cable published by Wikileaks.
[ALSO SEE MY COLOMBIA SECTION(CAUTION ,HORROR SHOW) A.S. Army mass grave in La Macarena http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303 La Macarena, the site of the grave, has been a very important site of U.S.-aided military operations since the mid-2000s. In this area, the U.S. government supported and advised the Colombian Army’s 2004-2006 “Plan Patriota” military offensive, and since 2007 has supported the “Plan for the Integral Consolidation of La Macarena” or PCIM, part of the new “Integrated Action” framework that is now guiding much U.S. assistance.http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1242