The paramilitary groups commanded by Mancuso fought the guerrillas, and financed their activities by receiving donations from land owners, drug trafficking, extortions and robbery.
13 Facts About Salvatore Mancuso
2.
Salvatore Mancuso was initially jailed in a Maximum Security Prison in Itagui, Antioquia after a peace process that led to his demobilization and then transferred to a prison in the city of Cucuta to help establish the whereabouts of some of the victims.
3.
Salvatore Mancuso was born in Monteria, the provincial capital of Cordoba Department, in the northern Colombian Caribbean Region.
4.
Salvatore Mancuso's father was an Italian immigrant from Sapri and his mother a Monteria native.
5.
Salvatore Mancuso studied civil engineering in the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and later farming administration in the Escuela de Formacion Tecnica Agricola in Bogota.
6.
Salvatore Mancuso studied English at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
7.
Salvatore Mancuso became a prominent landowner in Cordoba Department and in 1995 he joined the "Autodefensas Campesinas de Cordoba y Uraba" paramilitary group, citing being tired of guerrilla extortion and abuses that the Colombian authorities failed to prosecute.
8.
Salvatore Mancuso's name has been involved in the command of at least eight paramilitary groups that perpetrated several massacres such as Mapiripan.
9.
Salvatore Mancuso demobilized officially and surrendered to the Colombian authorities in the demobilization ceremony of the "Bloque Catatumbo" on December 10,2006.
10.
On January 15,2007, Salvatore Mancuso admitted his crimes to a Colombian court following a deal that his attorneys were pursuing to preclude his extradition to the United States for drug trafficking.
11.
Salvatore Mancuso confessed to the Colombian justice system in 2023 in order to benefit from the transitional justice system and detailed the links between the State and the paramilitaries.
12.
Salvatore Mancuso acknowledges that the paramilitaries helped elect Andres Pastrana in 1998 and Alvaro Uribe in 2002.
13.
Salvatore Mancuso testified that in the early 2000s, the AUC had met with anti-Chavez factions in Venezuela to discuss the AUC possibly operating against the Chavez government.