The list of these crimes is collected in registers in the Database of the Human Rights and Political Violence section in the Centre for Research and Peoples' Education (CRPE). The CRPE compiled the reports in a huge study that has just been presented in the Colombian capital.

Father Gabriel Giraldo, the Director of the NGO announced that the document had been developed from a study of its own records. This study created a database in 1988 in order to establish a report of crimes relating to the internal armed conflict.

"These are not all (the cases), but we identified 14,476 crimes against humanity, carried out solely by right-wing paramilitaries" emphasised Fr Gilraldo, who stated that the study had been limited to three distinct types of crime in order to concentrate only on the "most serious cases".

The study includes 11,161 cases of execution, 1,869 cases of persons who are missing and 164 victims of torture.

The remainder of cases refers to situations where victims were tortured then executed and "disappeared", or tortured and executed or subjected to another combination of these crimes.

"The vast majority of these crimes were carried out with total impunity and the victims have been identified - with a name and a face; these are not abstract crimes, these are not statistics" explained the Jesuit priest in order to show that the report recorded in all cases " dates, circumstances and locations where the crimes took place as well as the names of the victims".

Giraldo remarked that a reading of these stories shows that "these are definitely not isolated crimes"

He indicated that these were " systematic practices that lasted a certain number of years, that are extremely cruel, that were aimed at social organisations ranging from community action groups to left wing political parties".

This 500-page document is called " An Obligation to Humanity" - State Paramilitarism from 1988 - 2003" also contains a series of analysis on the growth of the phenomenon of armed extreme right-wing elements, up to its development into what is now called the " United Self-Defence of Colombia" (AUC).

"The responsibility of the United States in the concept of the Colombian State's paramilitary strategy is anything but small", according to the CRPE. This organisation has documented the involvement of Washington since 1962, at a time when guerrilla groups had not yet existed in the country.

According to the NGO, a paper developed by the management of the research unit of the School of Special Warfare in Fort Bragg (USA) following a visit to Colombia, recommended to Colombian State Forces that " sabotage and /or paramilitary terrorist activity be promoted against known supporters of communism".

According to witness accounts and other documents mentioned by the CRPE, this co-operation increased as years went by and included collaboration with rival drug traffickers which resulted in the current situation whereby " contractual private military personnel" along with a " covert mercenary force", according to the same source, amounts to " the most effective international militarism".

Fr Giraldo emphasised that the report was a contribution to the national and international debate on paramilitary impunity, a debate that begun with advances in talks between the government of Alvaro Uribe with AUC. This dialogue includes administration by the parliament of a judicial ruling for demobilised paramilitaries.

"What we wanted to do, was to develop an instrument of knowledge of, at least, one aspect of crimes committed by the paramilitaries against humanity", stressed the Director of the CRPE