COLOMBIAN CALLED TERRORIST, BUT VIEWS HIMSELF AS CRUSADER

BOGOTA - Carlos Castaqo is a Colombian warlord who admits hunting down the
men who kidnapped and killed his father.

He acknowledges ordering a brazen 1990 hit on a leftist presidential
candidate, and he makes no apologies for leading a paramilitary group that
massacres peasants in its zeal to beat leftist rebel insurgents. But lately
the head of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, has been
saying he is repentant for kidnappings and drug trafficking that have
become synonymous with his illegal paramilitary army.

And he's willing to surrender.

Castaqo was indicted by a U.S. court last week for allegedly smuggling 17
tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe over the last five years --
accused of everything from protecting jungle cocaine-processing
laboratories to setting quality and price controls for cocaine, and
managing maritime shipments.

But experts say his public outpouring of remorse is one of a series of
''spins'' by a politically savvy, image-conscious murderer who likes to
portray himself as a crusader who does evil for the good of his nation.

President Bush calls him a terrorist.

''I don't know that he's had much formal education, but he's extremely
smart, very quick,'' said Joaqumn Pirez, Castaqo's Miami lawyer.

Castaqo is the on-again, off-again leader of the AUC, a paramilitary army
born 20 years ago as a response to the nation's leftist insurgency, now 38
years old. Ranchers and other victims of kidnappings and extortion by the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, banded together to fight
back at any cost. The group, at first allied with the Medellmn cocaine
cartel, now is purported to have up to 14,000 members.

BUILT AN ARMY

Castaqo is credited with taking a ragtag group of vigilantes and turning
them into an organized, well-financed army. His involvement was triggered
by his father's 1979 kidnapping, a crime that ended in the elder Castaqo's
murder -- despite the paying of a ransom. In his recent book, My
Confessions, Castaqo describes how at 14 he and his older brother avenged
their father's death, hunting down the culprits one by one. In a
publication some media have dubbed a ''kill and tell'' biography, Castaqo
confesses to his first slaying: emptying a fully loaded pistol into the
face of his father's killer.

The elder Castaqo, a farmer in Antioquia, was kidnapped by FARC rebels who
sought steep extortion. Ill and exhausted, he was killed months later when
guerrillas feared a military operation was under way to rescue him. His
sons went on a two-year killing spree, eventually killing eight men,
including three of the elder Castaqo's former employees.

At 18, Castaqo went for military training in Israel, where he says he
learned the concept of ``armed self-defense.''

''They can paint me as Satan before the world,'' he says in the book,
written by Spanish journalist Mauricio Aranguren. ``I'm only consoled by
the fact that I did not start this war, and the self-defense forces are the
legitimate offspring of the Colombian guerrillas.''

But human rights reports say Castaqo's group has become worse than the
enemy it has been trying to beat. Although the AUC does not practice the
random terrorism that has become the mark of the FARC, it commits more
massacres and extrajudicial killings. Nearly 65 percent of the 439 people
killed in massacres last year were victims of the AUC, according to the
Colombian Defense Ministry's annual human rights report. The report says
the AUC killed 1,028 people last year; the FARC, 1,060.

Castaqo, a short man with a raspy voice, personally admits to 1,000
killings, among them those of Sen. Manuel Cepeda and presidential candidate
Carlos Pizarro. Today, Castaqo has 35 pending criminal cases and 27
warrants for his arrest.

''He believes this is all part of a war,'' Pirez explained. ``And in war,
some people get killed.''

Although few Colombians support the FARC, polls show not many endorse the
AUC, either.

Castaqo, 36, is the father of two teens, 13 and 16, from a previous
marriage. His second wife, 20-year-old Kenia, is expecting their first
child in December.

Castaqo choked up last week when asked by a Colombian reporter whether he
would miss the birth of his child if he surrenders to U.S. authorities.

DRUG ALLEGATIONS

Castaqo is facing a 12-page indictment, announced last week by U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, which details a series of drug shipments to
the United States and Europe.

In an interview last week with a Colombian radio and TV station, Castaqo
asserted that he's willing to face up to the charges, because he is
convinced both of his innocence and of the fairness of the American legal
system.

Experts say Castaqo does not understand that the paramilitary army's system
of ''taxing'' drug traffickers to generate $20 million a month makes him
culpable. And Castaqo seems unfazed by the legal consequences of the
murders to which he happily admits in his memoirs.

''He has the erroneous belief that this book of his, this criminal
testament, justifies what he did and after that, he's another person,''
said Salud Hernandez-Mora, an El Tiempo columnist who wrote the prologue to
My Confessions and has interviewed Castaqo four times. 'He thinks, `Judge
me for what I do from now on, not what I did before.' ''

In July, Castaqo publicly claimed to have stepped down from the AUC, saying
he was disgusted by kidnapping and drug trafficking and had lost control of
the commanders under him -- but he is still widely considered the boss. He
also steadfastly maintains that he opposes terrorism and says he once
worked as a government informant who reported locations of bombs planted by
drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

''This is a funny case of screwed up values and priorities,'' said Josi
Miguel Vivanco, of Human Rights Watch. ``He considers narco-trafficking to
be the worst thing, when his group, his leadership, and his confessions
refer to so many extrajudicial killings, assassinations, massacres and
atrocities of all kinds. It's an interesting manipulation of values.

``Something is wrong there.''

Vivanco is leery of Castaqo's latest media blitz offering his surrender.
Aranguren, who recorded 38 hours of interviews with Castaqo for his book,
doesn't buy it, either.

''Carlos Castaqo is a person of extremes, from passion and love to radical
violence,'' Aranguren said in a telephone interview from Mexico. ``I
totally believe half of Colombia is pro-Castaqo. I am clear on that. And in
that sense, Castaqo has won the war -- his war.''