On Jan. 8 the National Security Archive, a Washington, DC-based research group, released declassified US government documents showing that US diplomats and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew at least since 1994 that the Colombia security forces "employ death squad tactics in their counterinsurgency campaign," in the words of a 1994 CIA report. The military had a "history of assassinating left-wing civilians in guerrilla areas, cooperating with narcotics-related paramilitary groups in attacks against suspected guerrilla sympathizers and killing captured combatants," the CIA report said. The release of the documents came six days before Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US president George W. Bush. (Latin America Herald Tribune, Jan. 9)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Jan. 11

See our last post on Colombia.