Snacktime América Latina Roundup: 8/11

Colombia Demands Extradition of Fugitives

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia is demanding that Ireland hand over three Irish Republican Army-linked fugitives convicted of supporting terrorism in this South American country. The trio unexpectedly turned up in Ireland after eight months on the run.

"A Colombian court issued its verdict that confirmed what we believed from the start: that they were three IRA terrorists, explosives experts, who came to Colombia to train" Marxist rebels in urban terrorism techniques, Vice President Francisco Santos said in a statement.

[...] "These men are on-the-run terrorists," said Peter Robinson, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionists, Northern Ireland's largest party.

But Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party, welcomed the men's return to Ireland as "a great relief" and said he hoped "they can now get on with their lives."

KARI'NA LA ISLA, Venezuela - Six of Venezuela's indigenous communities received title to their ancestral lands on Tuesday in a ceremony that Venezuela's president said reversed centuries of injustice.

President Hugo Chavez said he hoped the government would be able to turn over titles to 15 other indigenous communities by the end of the year.

"What we're recognizing is the original ownership of these lands," Chavez said during the ceremony. "Now no one will be able to come and trample over you in the future."

But Chavez warned that the process of granting legal ownership must respect Venezuela's "territorial unity," and he urged other indigenous groups not to ask for "infinite expanses of territory."

"Don't ask me to give you the state's rights to exploit mines, to exploit oil," Chavez said. "Before all else comes national unity."

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - The Inter-American Court of Human Rights Tuesday refused a request by American Lori Berenson to review its ruling that upheld her 20-year sentence in Peru for terrorism.

In a decision issued in November, the Costa Rica-based court — the legal arm of the Organization of American States — rejected Berenson's arguments that Peru violated her rights in a 2001 civilian retrial. It was Berenson's last formal avenue of appeal.

The former New York City resident has denied any wrongdoing and maintains she is a political prisoner whose concern for social justice was distorted by authorities to look like a terrorist agenda.

Berenson was arrested in November 1995 and sentenced to life without parole by a secret military court, which said she was a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and masterminded a thwarted takeover of Peru's Congress to exchange hostages for imprisoned rebels.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A former Bosnia Serb paramilitary leader, wanted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity, was captured Monday in Argentina, officials said.

Milan Lukic, who was indicted in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2000 in connection with a string of notorious killings dating to the Bosnian war, was awaiting initial questioning after his arrest here, authorities said.

[...] According to the U.N. war crimes indictment, Lukic in 1992 organized a group of paramilitaries who between May 1992 and October 1994 "committed, planned, instigated and ordered the executions" of Bosnian Muslims in the territory of Visegrad and elsewhere in Bosnian Serb-controlled territory.