Colombian ex paramilitary boss deported back from the US

Tuesday, January 26th 2021 - 08:47 UTC

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Hernan Giraldo, 72, was originally extradited to the United States from Colombia in 2008, where he served a 12-year sentence for drug trafficking offenses.

REUTERS – A Colombian ex paramilitary boss accused of crimes including torture and murder was deported from the United States on Monday, Bogotá migration authorities revealed. Hernan Giraldo, 72, was extradited to the United States from Colombia in 2008, where he served a 12-year sentence for drug trafficking offenses.

Giraldo “will have to answer for the crimes including forced disappearance, killings, torture, kidnapping, forced displacement, terrorism, rape, forced prostitution, human trafficking and theft, among others,” Colombia's migration agency said in a statement.

Giraldo demobilized in 2006 under a peace deal in which thousands of paramilitaries laid down their weapons and submitted to legal proceedings.

According to victims' testimony and human rights investigators, Giraldo sexually abused dozens of women - including girls - when acting as commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia's (AUC) Tayrona Bloc, which operated in the North of Colombia.

The AUC was Colombia's largest paramilitary organization and is accused of massacres, kidnappings, forced disappearances, and acts of torture during its campaigns against left-wing guerrillas.

Far-right paramilitary units surged in the 1980s in rural Colombia with support from farmers, land owners and others who sought to defend themselves from attacks by leftist guerrillas amid state absence.