Thank you very much.
Dr. Richani and Ms. Paley, I'd like to reference yesterday's Washington Post, where a former police major, Juan Carlos Meneses, has alleged that Uribe's younger brother, Sanitago Uribe, led a fearsome paramilitary group in the 1990s in a northern town in Colombia who killed what they called petty thieves, guerrilla sympathizers, and suspected subversives.
Meneses said the group's hitmen trained at La Carolina, where the Uribe family ran an agro-business in the early 1990s. This is the first time the Uribe family has been directly implicated in the killings. Before then, we've had what Uribe has called, I guess, “deniability”. We have direct implication.
At the same time, we have a motion to cut off witnesses, and both of you have referenced the issue around rural Colombians, the impact on Afro-Colombians, on aboriginal Colombians, and the concerns around this agreement making things much worse for those individuals.
My first question is how do you feel the direct implication of the Uribe family in brutal killings will change the debate around the Colombian trade deal in places such as the U.S. Congress?
Secondly, do you not feel it important for this committee to hear from African Colombians, from the free trade union movement, and from aboriginal Colombians, none of whom have had the opportunity to come before the committee and all of whom have asked to come before the committee in the next few days?