Word: colombian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tested Texas' so-called castle-doctrine law--which states that people threatened in their home have a right to use deadly force--and triggered accusations of vigilantism and ethnic bias in the criminal-justice system. Horn, who expressed remorse over the killings, is white, while the victims were illegal Colombian immigrants...
...Bogotá Freedom for FARC Hostages Former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was rescued in a Colombian military-intelligence operation July 2, ending her six years as a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The most famous of FARC's estimated 750 captives, Betancourt, who holds French citizenship, was liberated along with 14 others, including three U.S. military contractors...
...taxes from coca farmers and drug traffickers, both of whom pay a $90-per-kg duty on every sale and purchase of unrefined cocaine in that area. Similar tariffs nationwide - and ransoms earned from kidnapping - are said to net the FARC hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The Colombian government, as well as its allies in Washington, have long used the term "narco-guerrillas" to describe the FARC, which they accuse of morphing from a guerrilla force into a drug cartel. "If not for drug trafficking, the FARC would not exist today," argues Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo...
...guerrilla warfare. The government "could not sustain an offensive on this scale without U.S. help," says Alberto. "They use American money to set up high mountain battalions, pay informants, for training, helicopters, boats and every type of war materiel. We believe we could overthrow the Colombian state if it weren't for U.S. help...
...maneuver couldn't have been more humiliating for a guerrilla force that a decade ago looked as though it might actually defeat the Colombian government. The question now is whether it can survive the demoralization, considering that dozens of its commanders have been killed or have surrendered recently and some 300 rank-and-file members are deserting every month, according to the government. They've even lost the enthusiasm of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, an unabashed FARC sympathizer who had brokered the release of a handful of other hostages this year. The Uribe government accuses...