AUC founder gave orders to El Tiempo journalist: Letters

Carlos Castaño, the late founder of paramilitary organization AUC, instructed a journalist of the leading El Tiempo newspaper what to publish, reported website Un Pasquin Wednesday.

In a letter sent to journalist Salud Hernandez-Mora in January 2003, Castaño wrote, “I beg, very respectfully, that you smooth out my answer to the question of how to finance the paramilitaries abandoning drug trafficking.”

“Esteemed commander,” replied Hernandez-Mora on January 31, 2003, “I understand your request, and it will be done.”

Un Pasquin also accused Hernandez-Mora of receiving privileged information from the Colombian intelligence agency DAS about illegal investigations against Supreme Court judges.

According to Un Pasquin, when the newspaper contacted her, the Spanish journalist said, “I’m not going to now, not ever, neither to you or to the courts, or anyone, who are my sources.”

“I couldn’t care less what they say,” she said. “I have the immense luck that I am going to Madrid and during the 15 days I can’t be reached. So they can say the shit they want about me. I don’t care.”

The correspondence between Hernandez-Mora and Castaño was not the first released by Un Pasquin. El Espectador columnist Ernesto Yamhure resigned August 31 after the newspaper revealed that he too had regularly been in contact with the paramilitary boss.

According to reports, Yamhure allowed Castaño to modify his column.

The letters reportedly prove that Castaño was corresponding not only with Hernandez-Mora and Yamhure, but with former Constitutional Court Judge Rodrigo Escobar Gil and the current Colombian ambassador to Peru Jorge Visbal.

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