1) Colombia Charges Rebel in 3 Americans' Deaths, Dec. 22, 1999
2) Murder in Colombia, Dec. 14, 1999
=================================================

December 22, 1999
Colombia Charges Rebel in 3 Americans' Deaths

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOGOTA, Colombia, Dec. 21 -- A leftist rebel commander was charged in
absentia with murder today in the deaths of three Americans in February.

The officer, German Briceno of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
was also charged with kidnapping, sedition and grand larceny, the chief
prosecutor, Alfonso Gomez, said.

Mr. Briceno commands rebel forces in the northeastern region that includes
the Uwa Indian reserve.

The three Americans -- Terence Freitas, 24, who had recently moved to
Brooklyn, N.Y., from Oakland, Calif.; Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, of Brooklyn;
and Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, of Hawaii -- were visiting the reserve when rebels
abducted them on Feb. 25. Their bodies were found a week later just across
the border in Venezuela. They had been bound and shot to death.

Also indicted today was a member of the Uwa tribe who was charged as an
accomplice, Gustavo Bogota. Mr. Bogota and Mr. Briceno are at large. Each
could receive terms of up to 60 years in prison if tried and convicted.

The leadership of the 15,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces has denied
that Mr. Briceno ordered the killings. The leadership said a rogue squad
leader carried out the murders without consulting superiors and would be
disciplined.

The American ambassador, Curtis W. Kamman, has said the rebels have to
accept responsibility for the killings "at the highest level" and surrender
those responsible to civilian justice.

-----------------------------------------------------
from Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/12/14/colombia/index.html

Murder in Colombia
American Indians seek to avenge the murder of one of their
leaders by leftist rebels.

By Ana Arana

Dec. 14, 1999 | The same day that guerrillas of the Colombian
Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) executed three American
Indian rights activists on the Venezuelan border, the FARC also
sent an electronic message to American Indian leaders in New
York promising their prompt release. The message was received
with jubilation at the American Indian Community House in New
York, where a crowd had gathered. The festive mood suddenly
turned dark when American Express called to say two credit
cards had been found on the body of a dead woman in
Venezuela. The cards led to the identification of Ingrid
Washinowatok of New York, Lahe'ena'e Gay of Hawaii and
Terence Freitas of California, the very activists the Indians
thought were on their way to safety.

Almost nine months later, little progress has been made in
apprehending those responsible for the March murders. The
Colombian government is eager to revive faltering peace talks
with the guerrillas and the Clinton administration has not tied
further aid to the resolution of the case, although it has refused
any contact with the rebels until the suspects are handed over.

But the American Indian movement, angered by the loss of
Washinowatok, a key leader, is mounting a campaign to push for
justice. A three-month investigation uncovered the brutal nature of the
killings and the murky mix of motives and tragic
misunderstandings behind the crime.

The three Americans were abducted on Feb. 25 as they left the
reservation of the indigenous U'wa tribe in northeast Colombia,
where they had attended a religious ceremony. Washinowatok
headed the Fund for Four Directions, a wealthy American Indian
philanthropic group founded by Anne Rockefeller, daughter of the
late David Rockefeller, to help indigenous projects around the
world. She and Gay, a photographer and organizer of Indian
cultural projects in Hawaii, had been invited by the U'Wa to help
set up an U'Wa Indian language school.

Freitas, an environmental activist, had been in and out of the
territory for the last two years working with the U'wa and Project
Underground, an aggressive environmental group that operates
worldwide, to fight oil exploration by Los Angeles-based
Occidental Petroleum on their ancestral lands. The U'Wa's threat
to commit mass suicide had garnered worldwide attention, but the
women had no idea that the U'Wa were also locked in a
longstanding feud with the guerrillas, who seek to control the
oil-rich territory. Freitas was the only one who had had contact
with the FARC, and he believed he had ironed out all his
problems in two meetings he held with FARC representatives,
according to Colombian sources.

U.S. and Colombian investigators believe that the orders to kill
the Americans came from the FARC's central headquarters, but
U.S. officials dispute Indian leaders' assertions that the three were
targeted because of U.S. policy in the region. "We believe they were
targeted because they were foreigners who went into an
area where the FARC wants to control access, not because they
were Americans," said Ambassador Michael Sheehan, the State
Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, which monitors
FARC activities.

Although the deaths have disappeared from the media, they are
still a topic of hot discussion on Indian reservations across the
United States because Washinowatok was a rising star in this
dismembered community. She sought to reconnect native
Americans to the global indigenous movement at a time when
many Indian activists were focused on fights over casino licenses,
according to friends and followers. "Ingrid did heroic things. It's not
that she was naive to go into Colombia, it's that she was doing what she
thought was right. She lived by her principles," said John Trudell, a
former radical Indian leader who was one of the leaders of the 1969 Indian
takeover of Alcatraz Island, and is
now a musician in Los Angeles. Trudell said few outside their
community can understand the pain and anger American Indians
felt at losing Washinowatok in such a violent manner, and to such
an unlikely enemy.

A Menominee Indian from Minnesota, Washinowatok was the
daughter of an Indian chief who had fought during the '50s for
Indian land rights. A prominent American Indian who grew up
during the heyday of the Indian movement in the United States,
Washinowatok was at the helm of a new push in her community
to get involved in indigenous movements around the Americas. A
graduate of the University of Havana, she was fluent in Spanish
and had done extensive work in Guatemala with Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu. So, when the U'was asked her
for help in preserving their language, Washinowatok jumped at
the chance, and decided to go to Colombia despite warnings
from several friends. "Ingrid thought she would make a
difference," said Jose Barreiro, head of the Native American
Studies Program at Cornell University.

Soon after the three were kidnapped, they were marched toward
the Venezuelan border through virgin rain forest and harsh terrain. When
her body was found, Washinowatok had no shoes and her feet showed cuts and
abrasions suggesting she had been forced to walk barefoot. She had been
bitten by a poisonous spider, and
the FARC refused to give her proper medication after a quick
visit to a guerrilla-friendly doctor, according to Colombian
intelligence documents. When the Venezuelan police recovered
her body, her face was destroyed with a gunshot, and her
American Express cards with her name and the name of her
foundation were lodged in her panties. "The way they killed them
was torturous," said the Venezuelan captain who found the bodies.

American Indians now admit that they made major
miscalculations in their analysis of the FARC during those eight
days when Washinowatok was held captive. "We operated from
the point of view -- hey, we're Indians. Ingrid had studied in
Havana, she spoke Spanish and she had worked with Indian
people all over. We thought it should be OK," said Alex Ewen of
the Solidarity Foundation, a New York Indian philanthropic
group. "We didn't understand that this group was different."

Although the FARC is a self-declared Marxist-Leninist group that
has been fighting the Colombian government for the last 30 years,
its tactics reflect what one Colombian analyst has called a "Gen-X
revolutionary" style, a mixture of Marxism and outlaw capitalist
practices they have learned from drug traffickers, who pay them
up to $500 million a year for protecting cocaine plantations and
drug shipping routes.

"These people have nothing in common with other revolutionary
movements in Central America. They are the same as drug
traffickers," said Cornell's Barreiro. "But you have to understand, Indians
have a hard time criticizing revolutionary movements."

Many American Indians believed that being Indians committed to
the cause of the underdogs kept them safe from harm -- even
though 11 U.S. citizens have been killed by the FARC in the last
20 years. They were also lulled because last year the FARC had
released three Americans bird-watchers unharmed. "Everybody
told us the FARC only kidnapped for ransom," said Barreiro.

The murders have changed that perception. A few community
members still doubt the FARC carried out the murders. But the
prevalent image among the community at large -- from small
Indian tribal chiefs around the country to legendary American
Indian Movement figures such as Clyde Bellecourt and John
Trudell -- is that the FARC are simple criminals. "The truth is that the
left is the worst for indigenous people," said Trudell in a telephone
interview from Los Angeles. "No matter how you want
to see the FARC, you don't kill non-combatants."

The American Indian community has been holding strategy
sessions along with Washinowatok's husband, Ali El Issa, a
Palestinian she met in Havana. "We have a lot of people in this
country and other countries who are eager to support a
revolution, and the FARC gets some of their support. Our interest
is to get to those people and show them what the FARC is
capable of doing -- of murdering potential allies," explained
Trudell, who shies away from calling their efforts a war. "We have
little resources, but we will be heard." Options are to hack into
the Web sites used by the FARC for propaganda purposes and
broadcast Washinowatok's picture and biography, and to expose the names of
people who work for the FARC in the United States and in Europe.

Indian leaders are not saying when they will start
their campaign, to keep the element of surprise.
Colombian authorities have charged FARC rebel leader German
Suarez Briceno, known as "Grannobles," and a U'wa Indian who
informed on the activities of Washinowatok and her companions
the week they visited the reservation, for the murders. Both are at large,
and there are no expectations that the Colombian
authorities will ever catch them. Grannobles is brother to Jorge
Suarez Briceno, aka "Mono Jojoy," a brother of German, and the
second most powerful military leader within the FARC's top
command. Indian leaders say the order to the Americans
came from Mono Jojoy, but U.S. officials say only that the order
came from the central command.

The FARC has rejected the Colombian indictment, maintaining
that a guerrilla commander known as Gildardo acted without the
approval of his superiors. They have promised a guerrilla
investigation, but no results have been released, and radio
intercepts show a less repentant attitude.

Two months after the murder, for instance, Grannobles was heard
on short-wave radio saying, "The Americans were killed because
they worked for the DEA and the CIA and had come to this
country to turn the Indians against us." While the FARC has
issued a public apology for the murders, it has never
communicated directly with the community, nor answered
requests by Washinowatok's family to meet with rebel
representatives.

"In the end they will know Indians are neutral people, and we
should be treated that way. We have a long tradition at this,"
warned Ewen. But Rosemary Richmond, director of the Indian
Community House in New York, put it more plainly. "We will not
rest until there is justice," she said.

About the writer Ana Arana, an investigative journalist
who focuses on criminal organizations
in Latin America, is a senior fellow at
the Center for War, Peace and the
News Media.
************************************************************
Distribuido por: Distributed by:
'AMAZON ALLIANCE' FOR INDIGENOUS AND
TRADITIONAL PEOPLES OF THE AMAZON BASIN
1367 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20036-1860
tel (202)785-3334
fax (202)785-3335
amazoncoal@igc.org
http://www.amazoncoalition.org