The appointment of Salvatore Mancuso and other criminals as peacekeepers has generated repercussions throughout the country. Now other criminals have also asked the national government to link them to the so-called “total peace” processes.
Such is the case of Jorge Eliécer Díaz Collazos, alias ‘Castor’, top ringleader of the Los Costeños criminal network, which commits crimes mainly in the department of Atlántico.
According to RCN News, in the middle of a hearing the dangerous criminal reaffirmed his intentions to be appointed as peace manager in the processes carried out by the Government. Díaz Collazos urged the Peace Commissioner and President Gustavo Petro to take him into account in negotiations with criminal groups.
During the judicial proceeding, Castor asked to speak and declared: “Following the new presidency, the idea of ”total peace” for Colombia, we have always made it clear and from the beginning I told my lawyer that we were not opposed to entering and to try to build peace for our country, which is the purpose of what our president is trying to do”.
The first time that the leader of the Costeños requested to be designated “peace manager” was in September of last year, when he was in Venezuela and sent a letter addressed to President Gustavo Petro, the President of the Senate Roy Barreras and the Minister of Relations Foreign Alvaro Leyva.
In the letter, alias Castor, he stated: “Acting in his own name and as the leader and head of the group called Los Costeños, which interferes in the Atlantic, with a history of more than 10 years at the helm of this organization, I express the interest of being part of the dialogues and the agreements reached in the process of admission to justice within the framework of the prospects for peace, reparation and reconciliation that our honorable President of the Republic and our honorable President of the Senate have publicly announced”.
However, Jorge Eliécer Díaz Collazos did not receive a response to his request and now, from the high security prison of La Dorada (Caldas) he asked for a new opportunity to be a peace manager, but so far he has not received any positive news from of the government.
‘Castor’ is prosecuted for ordering homicides, extortion, sale or collection of narcotic substances, recruitment of minors, displacement and theft, throughout the jurisdiction of the Atlantic, according to the Prosecutor’s Office. The dangerous ringleader also has proceedings against him for ordering dismemberment; manufacture, trafficking and possession of firearms and ammunition; and conspiracy to commit a crime.
Possible mastermind of a massacre in Barranquilla
According to the authorities, Díaz Collazos is accused of ordering the massacre of the Vega Daza in the north of Barranquilla, at the end of June, to keep the illegal businesses carried out by the members of the criminal clan of Guajiro descent.
Intelligence agents of the National Police verified that despite being in the maximum security prison of La Dorada (Caldas), alias ‘Castor’ would have received the support of several drug lords from the Caribbean coast to perpetrate the triple homicide and that the criminal network of the Costeños to take over what the Vega Daza left free.
“Castor was anointed to have control of collections and logistics management for the development of the drug trafficking business. The downside of that is that when it no longer works, the story of the Vegas can also be repeated (…) This is information that adds to the investigations into drug trafficking in Barranquilla and the rest of the Atlantic,” said investigators in the case. to The Herald. with Infobae