US Soldiers and Contractors Sexually Abused at Least 54 Children in Colombia Between 2003 and 2007

---

"They abducted her, they drugged her, they took her to the air base near the town of Melgar and raped her, they took videos of her."

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: The Nation
By Greg Grandin | April 7, 2015

When Colombian men rape Colombian women, it is news. When US soldiers and private defense contractors are the rapists, not so much. Last week, FAIR noticed that not one major media organization in the United States has covered the charge, reported in Colombia (and online in English by the invaluable Medellín-based >Colombia Reports), “that US military soldiers and contractors had sexually abused at least fifty-four children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the rapists were never punished–either in Colombia or stateside–due to American military personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements between the two countries.” Nor, as far as I can tell, have any of the State Department’s allied human rights groups made mention of the allegations.

The media silence goes hand in hand with the official immunity granted not just to US diplomats, but soldiers and employees of shadowy private security firms hired by Washington to carry out much of Plan Colombia. One of the rapes occurred in 2007 and was reported in the Colombian press. It was allegedly committed by Army sergeant Michael J. Coen and an employee of a private security contractor, César Ruiz. The victim was a 12-year-old girl. “They abducted her, they drugged her, they took her to the air base near the town of Melgar and raped her, they took videos of her,” the victim’s mother told reporters. Then they drove her into town and pushed her out of their car in front of a church. The crime was well covered in Colombia, but a search of Proquest news turned up only one item in English the United States, a translation of a piece that was part of reporting in Spanish published by the Nuevo Herald (affiliated with the Miami Herald) by Gonzalo Guillén and Gerardo Reyes:

The U.S. government has made little effort to investigate a U.S. army sergeant and a Mexican civil contractor implicated in Colombia in the rape of a 12-year-old girl in August 2007, according to an El Nuevo Herald investigation.

The suspects, Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor Cesar Ruiz, were taken out of Colombia under diplomatic immunity, and do not face criminal charges in the United States in the rape in a room at Colombia’s German Olano Air Force Base in Melgar, 62 miles west of Bogota.

[ more ...]



Read original post here: US Soldiers and Contractors Sexually Abused at Least 54 Children in Colombia Between 2003 and 2007


This content-post is archived for backup and to keep archived records of any news Islam Ahmadiyya. The views expressed by the author and source of this news archive do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of Ahmadiyya Times. Ahmadiyya Times is not an organ of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, nor in any way associated with any of the community's official websites.