Colombia's right-wing paramilitary group, the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), killed 1,124 people among
those it had kidnapped, said a non-governmental organization (NGO),
local media reported on Wednesday.
In a report published by New Hope for Hostages, the group said
it had presented a long list of people who disappeared, and are now
believed to be dead, to the AUC heads who were now jailed in the
northeastern town of Itagui.
The AUC said that they had only kidnapped those who had links
with leftist guerrilla groups.
The AUC has its origins in vigilante groups set up by cattle
ranchers and drug traffickers to combat left-wing guerrillas. It
has engaged in a peace process with the government, and some 31,000
AUC fighters have been demobilized.
But Colombia's human rights groups have repeatedly criticized
the government for giving too much concession to the AUC.
Colombia has been locked in a four-decade long civil war, the
longest in Latin America, in which government forces, leftist
guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries are fighting one another.
The conflicts kill more than 3,000 people every year.
(Xinhua News Agency February 1, 2007)
