“My job? I had to kill those whom my boss picked out! If he told me you were helping the rebel forces, then, I would kill you!” Unlike many of his fellow fighters now “demobbed” who state “they never did any harm” during their “service” in the heart of the sinister Colombian paramilitary forces, Raul *, 26 years, reveals everything. Active collaboration with the Army, terrible crimes, drug traficking, everything that happened.

“I don’t deny what I did. It was horrible, but I did it. Anyway, it is in the past. I turned in my guns four years ago. Today I am studying. I wanted to do my final second level exam and become an accountant.” Raul is taking part in the Colombian government’s rehabilitation programme. We met him between two classes in a hall at Cepar, a rather special school in the middle of Medellín.

Some of the 2,000 students who attend there are attempting, like Raul, to finish their secondary education. Others are learning for the first time how to read and write. Aged between 18-50,nearly all of them are former member s of Colombia’s armed conflict. A huge majority ”served” in AUC, a “federation” of paramilitary groups who committed horrible atrocities against the civilian population and ,officially, “disarmed” during a particularly controversial process. Others are former guerrillas who left the jungle to try to join civilian life.

Officially those who benefit from deals given as part of the rehabilitation programmes are supposed to have committed no crimes and to have “told “the whole truth” during their demob process. The majority of them state they were forcibly enrolled by AUC or FARC, or joined the paramilitaries “like any other business “because they were unemployed”. No matter which, nearly all say they have “killed nobody”. And all say they are happy to have swopped their guns for a biro, and to have “ moved on, to lead a normal life”.

Recruited at 16.

Raul, himself, speaks in a fairly confrontational manner to the group of journalists invited to see the “example of rehabilitation unit”. He complains that the top paramilitary leaders were extradited to the USA, because, he explains, their departure led to a bloody war of succession.

Then, he stops. And he talks about his recruitment by AUC, when he was only 16. The three “extremely tough “months of training, when the least mistake could lead to a death sentence. “As a rite of entry, I had to torture someone, dismember him alive… It was horrible. The first time I killed, it traumatised me completely. I was sick for two weeks. But the boss told me that if I did not pull myself together very quickly, he would get rid of me. I recovered, I did not have a choice”.

How many people had the smiling young man killed during his six years in the ranks of the infamous Carlos “Macaco”Jimenez? Raul counts on his fingers, then, he reviewed them all again, and revised saying “No, actually, it’s better I don’t say how many…” Later, he will admit to having killed “two, three per month, sometimes more”.

“We were fighting against FARC, often alongside the army, he tells us. You know, at that time, our organisation was practically legal. If we needed to get around for an operation, we would call the military, sometimes even a colonel, and he would send us some vehicles.”

And how were their activities financed?” Selling cocaine of course!” But how is it that he benefits from the rehabilitation programme, as he has not hidden his crimes? “Well, no one has even asked me anything. I just signed a form saying I undertook not to take up arms again. That’s all.”

• *Not his real name