Carlos Castano was 16 when Marxist guerrillas kidnapped and murdered his father in the humid hinterlands of Antioquia province in central Colombia. The right-wing paramilitary supremo has spent most of the ensuing two decades cutting a murderous swath through countless towns and villages in a
crusade to avenge his father's death.

ONE OF THE worst atrocities attributed to Castano's Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) occurred in the southern town of Mapiripan, where 30 suspected leftist sympathizers were rounded up, tortured and slaughtered by his foot soldiers in July 1997. In an interview that year the renegade was unrepentant: 'I am not at all sorry for Mapiripan because there wasn't a single innocent among those who died, he thundered. The type of people who were killed shouldn't worry anyone. I will never regret that.' Last June
Castano was sentenced in absentia to 40 years in prison for the massacre.

Now the 39-year-old warlord known to many Colombians as 'the Monster' is suing for peace. On July 15, Castano reached a tentative agreement with the government of President Alvaro Uribe to begin disarming
his estimated 13,000 combatants later this year. In exchange for giving up their guns, Castano and other paramilitary commanders would be granted a general amnesty for human-rights abuses and other crimes. Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo has said that the paramilitary leaders might avoid prison by making cash reparations for their crimes, and that AUC members could make 'symbolic acts of contrition' such as public service. (Castano has hinted that they might give back some of the land they seized.) That has officials in both the United States and Colombia crying foul. 'People like Carlos Castano, [AUC military chief] Salvatore Mancuso and others who’ve ordered or committed heinous crimes must be
brought to justice,' says U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. 'There should be no deals that allow murderers to escape punishment.'

Allowing Castano & Co. to walk free could also send the wrong message in the U.S.- financed war on drugs in Colombia. Washington has invested $2.5 billion in Bogota's Plan Colombia anti-drug initiative over the past three years and the program is starting to yield some results. Uribe claimed last week that aerial spraying had reduced coca cultivation by 15 percent since he took office. Colombia remains the world's leading producer and distributor of cocaine, and by his own admission Castano and some of his top associates turned to drug trafficking sometime ago to help finance their military operations. The Bush administration formally sought the extradition of both Castano and Mancuso last year on charges that they had shipped 17 tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe over a five-year span dating back to 1997.

But Castano now claims he's a changed man. He wants to join the war on drugs and to prove his newfound commitment, Castano says he wants U.S. officials to attend the next round of peace talks with the Uribe government. 'We want to let them know that they can count on our legitimized movement to cooperate in the struggle against drug trafficking,' the paramilitary leader told NEWSWEEK by e-mail last week. 'We could begin to eradicate thousands of hectares of coca [fields] and expose the drug-trafficking activities that we identify in our regions.'

The Bush administration has reacted cautiously to the peace initiative. Two years ago the State Department added the AUC to its list of terrorist organizations, and Washington has publicly refused to negotiate with Colombia's paramilitary forces. A U.S. official last week reiterated that policy. But that position has been called into question by a meeting last May between an AUC representative and a U.S. diplomat in Colombia. According to a leaked memo written by the AUC representative, the diplomat,
identified as U.S. Embassy Political Officer Alexander Lee, told the AUC emissary that paramilitary leaders might 'receive leniency if they cooperate once in custody.'

According to that same memo, the U.S. diplomat supposedly stated that peace talks between the AUC and the Uribe government should take priority over ongoing efforts to put Castano and Mancuso on trial in a U.S. courtroom on drug-trafficking charges. The State Department has confirmed that a meeting took place, but says it didn't involve negotiations. 'There were no negotiations,' a State spokesman told Agence France-Presse. 'The purpose of the meeting was to reiterate that U.S. policy is to extradite
Colombians who've been indicted in the United States.’ Yet Washington seems to have tacitly endorsed the peace talks by earmarking $3 million to help pay for the disarming of Castano's fighters.

Is the Colombian government seeking peace at any price? Some skeptics think so, and challenge the motives underlying its decision to sit down at the table with the AUC and other paramilitaries. Uribe was elected president by a landslide margin last year largely on a promise to crack down on the country's leftist guerrilla forces. His predecessor engaged in three years of fruitless talks with the largest of these armies, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and on the campaign trail Uribe repeatedly insisted on a ceasefire as the indispensable condition for opening negotiations with any of the country’s armed insurgents. But top paramilitary commanders never concealed their sympathies for the unabashedly right-wing Uribe in last year's vote: when a NEWSWEEK correspondent met with Mancuso at a ranch near the city of Monteria last year, the gates of the property were festooned with Uribe for president posters.

Some political analysts warn that the upcoming talks with the AUC may have more to do with obstructing justice than bringing real tranquility to Colombia. 'They are looking to cover up the past and whitewash the names of the commanders of the AUC,' says Daniel Garcia Pena, the senior government official in charge of peace talks under former president Ernesto Samper. The beneficiaries of any such cover-up might include several retired Colombian military officers, who have been accused of abetting some
of the AUC's worst massacres.

Some of Castano's erstwhile allies are boycotting the negotiations and raising questions of their own. The commander of a splinter militia known as Rodrigo 00 says Castano is using the peace process to obtain a
blanket pardon for major drug traffickers inside the AUC. Based in President Uribe's native province of Antioquia, Rodrigo says his association with Castano goes back 20 years, to the time when wealthy
cattle ranchers and drug lords began organizing small bands of gunmen to defend themselves against leftist guerrillas bent on kidnapping and plunder. Those bands later grew into well-equipped paramilitary forces that did battle with the FARC and other Marxist rebels for control over vast stretches of the lawless Colombian countryside. But it wasn't just politics that fueled these turf wars: both sides became heavily involved in drug trafficking over time. Rodrigo and a few other regional paramilitary chiefs contend that drug trafficking has weakened their movement, and have distanced themselves from the AUC and Castano's peace offensive.

Castano warns of dire consequences for the country if he and his comrades in arms are denied amnesty and wind up behind bars. Press reports have linked scores of prominent Colombian businessmen and politicians to drug trafficking as well as to the country's paramilitary forces, and Castano suggests he is prepared to tell all on the witness stand if necessary. He has a lot at stake: Colombia's attorney general has opened at least 35 cases against him, including charges for the murder of human-rights workers, journalists and politicians. 'If people insist we must be sent to jail, we would accept it, but it would be necessary to jail the terrorists and drug-trafficking bosses of the guerrillas, as well as some people from the national elite who are equally guilty, equally responsible for our national tragedy,' Castano told NEWSWEEK. 'Justice with jail time? Yes, but for everyone.' In a country like Colombia, that could
include quite a few of the rich and infamous, and invite more than a few messy complications.

(With Joseph Contreras in Miami and Mark Duffy in Bogotá)

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

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