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Foreign student beaten, Part II

For those of you who were interested in hearing more details of the story about my friend who was beaten, here are his words...

"Here`s basically what happened. I spent most of December in the Pacific coast portion of Cauca department, on the Guapi and Timbiquí Rivers. Neither of which has significant guerrilla presence except for far far up the river, nor paramillitary presence at all. One night in Timbiquí, I went out with some friends to a local bar. I was outside making a phone call when two soldiers from the Naval Infantry asked me for my papers. We went to my house and I showed them my papers. They left and I went back to the bar, when about 15 minites later, they showed up outside the bar telling me they needed to talk to me in their bunker, which is within the town. When I went in, they made my friends wait outside and started kicking me, asking me who I really was. Luckily, they only got a few kicks in before one of my friends, an off-duty police officer (the National Police also has a presence in the town) talked to the commander and got me turned loose. That was pretty much it and I was able to continue my work in the town without harassment for the rest of my time there (about 3 weeks.)

I wrote an email to some friends, and it turns out that a close friend of mine has a family friend who is like a retired admiral or something, and within 3 days of sending out the email, there were coronels and I do´'t even know what helicoptering in and out of the town, questioning everybody, and it looks like they fired the lieutenant and the other soldiers involved. I'm a little embarrassed with the townpeople, who have had to put up with a bunch of Navy people in their town asking them questions, but it seems like all's well there..."

By 007CA on Jan 24, 2006, 15:09 in Politics & the war.

juancegomez says on Jan 24, 2006, 15:33:

That's better than nothing I guess.... ...still, it's sad to see once again that sometimes one has to pull strings in order for the system to work.

That doesn't only happen in Colombia, of course, but I'm amazed at the amount of times that it does.

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Mr. Hollywood says on Jan 24, 2006, 16:21:

Glad that worked out Sorry to hear your friend had to endure that. I'm glad to see that the system, in its own weird way, worked it out.

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Compadre says on Jan 24, 2006, 16:35:

You are lucky you didn't got killed... God is really up there... in Colombia people kill eventhough they ain't sure if you are the target or not.

Si del cielo te caen limones; aprende a hacer limonada.

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Wastelandlive says on Jan 24, 2006, 18:53:

Now that's a lot more believable... Thanks for the update.

Nothing grosser than dirty cops, soldiers, whatever. Nice to see an officer go down - that's key.

Now if I were you're buddy... I'd go elsewhere for awhile. A long while.

Wasteland

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