Colombia's right-wing paramilitaries have admitted killing a union leader last week, accusing him of being a leftist guerrilla commander.
In a communique posted on its Web site over the weekend, the United Self Defense Forces said it executed Aury Marrugo, president of a regional oil union, after a paramilitary tribunal found him guilty of being a commander of the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second largest rebel army.
The body of Marrugo was found on Wednesday, days after paramilitaries fighting in Colombia's 37-year-old war kidnapped him and his bodyguard near the Caribbean city of Cartagena.
The paramilitary group known by its Spanish acronym AUC, said in a rambling Weekly Editorial that Marrugo was responsible for the kidnapping of dozens of people in northern Colombia as a local commander of the 5,000-member Cuban-inspired ELN, as the rebel group in known in Spanish.
The two-page communique was signed by Carlos Castano, who heads the 8,000-member AUC's political directorate. Colombia is locked in an escalating war that has killed 40,000 people in the last decade. The three-way conflict pits leftist rebels against the armed forces and the AUC.
Last week, the ELN threatened to boycott a peace meeting with government negotiators set for December the 12th in Cuba to protest the killing of Marrugo.
Human rights groups accuse Colombia's military of having links with the AUC as part of a dirty war against rebels and suspected rebel sympathizers.
In an interview in Sunday's in El Espectador weekly, Colombia's top military commander Gen. Fernando Tapias reiterated government claims that the army is cracking down on the AUC, but said many people and organizations are financing the AUC - branded a terrorist organization by Washington.
President Andres Pastrana, who leaves office in August, is engaged in peace talks with the 17,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America's oldest and most powerful rebel army. But the talks are at a standstill.