A retired Colombian police general who was security chief for former President Alvaro Uribe from 2002 to 2006 betrayed international counternarcotics operations for nearly a decade while on the payroll of major drug traffickers, according to a newly unsealed U.S. indictment.
A bombing that killed two bodyguards of an archconservative former interior minister and injured at least 39 people Tuesday in a busy commercial district of Bogota has raised fears that violence not seen in the Colombian capital in years could return.
A midday bombing that killed two bodyguards of an archconservative former interior minister and injured at least 39 people in a busy commercial district of Bogota has raised fears that violence not seen in the Colombian capital in years could return.
Now that Congress is returning from the August recess with plans to vote on pending free-trade agreements, partisan bickering must not be allowed to kill the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The Colombia of President Juan Manuel Santos is a far different country from the Colombia of his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe. Liberals should recognize that some progress has been made on human rights concerns that kept them from supporting the agreement for nearly five years.
It has been four years since the United States and Colombia signed a reciprocal trade agreement. Unfortunately, the agreement has yet to be implemented. In June 2007, then-President George W. Bush sent the agreement to Congress but the Democratic majority in the House refused to vote on it. The new Republican Majority in the House must ensure a vote on this agreement, as it will create U.S. jobs and make good on a promise to an important ally.
Former President Alvaro Uribe sought secret talks during his second term with Colombia's main leftist rebel group in Switzerland, and the guerrillas even reached out to the U.S. Embassy, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables.
A car bomb exploded outside a major radio station and banks in Colombia's capital on Thursday, shattering windows and injuring at least nine people, police said. No deaths were reported.
Abdullah Khadr, a brother of the sole Western detainee at the detention facility at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was freed from jail Wednesday after a court rejected a U.S. request for his extradition.
A B-team of socialist speakers spent Cuba's Revolution Day bashing the United States for everything from its drug consumption to the war in Iraq to its military support for Colombia, portraying Washington as the great villain in world affairs.
