By Patrick Markey BOGOTA, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Watching a top Colombian paramilitary commander testify about atrocities he committed during years of conflict, Teresita Gaviria cautiously hopes for answers to how her son and thousands of others disappeared. Salvatore Mancuso, who waged a dirty war against Marxist guerrillas, has coolly recounted killings as part of a peace deal granting reduced sentences to members of right-wing militias who give up the gun, confess and compensate victims. Nine years after her teenage son went missing after passing a police roadblock on the way from Medellin, Gaviria just wants to hear Mancuso and other paramilitaries tell the truth. "That is all we are looking for," said Gaviria, who leads a group called Mothers of La Candelaria. Human rights groups and prosecutors accuse commanders like Mancuso of killing or kidnapping thousands of people suspected of links to rebels waging an insurgency for four decades. The murders were sometimes committed in league with state forces and often based on flimsy evidence, they say. More than 31,000 paramilitaries have demobilized as part of U.S.-ally President Alvaro Uribe's campaign to reduce violence by retaking areas controlled by armed gangs. But the rebels, financed by the cocaine trade, are still fighting. Mancuso is the first leader to go before prosecutors but his testimony, to be broadcast on television when it restarts, comes as Uribe tries to fend off a scandal linking some of his congressional allies to the right-wing militias. Mancuso, who Washington accuses of involvement in drug-trafficking, was already convicted in absentia for taking part in a 1997 massacre of at least 15 peasants. "If he is not asked difficult questions and receives his reduced sentence and there is no serious investigation and verification, then the process loses a lot of credibility," said Maria McFarland, a Colombia expert at Human Rights Watch. "This is a person who should have a wealth of information." LONG WAY TO GO Victims are slowly coming forward but rights groups fear intimidation by paramilitary leaders who they say have kept their criminal networks even after signing the peace accords. Police are scouring Colombia for hundreds of mass graves, where victims of the paramilitaries were hacked up and buried. Legal experts and relatives who witnessed Mancuso's recent closed sessions say he has so far given few concrete details about murders but revealed what many have long suspected -- his contacts with politicians and the military. Dressed smartly and equipped with a laptop, Mancuso said he ordered around 300 murders and knows of hundreds more committed in the name of crushing the Marxist insurgents, witnesses say. He has testified about help from some military officers and handed over a document signed before the peace deal between a group of politicians and the paramilitaries he commanded. "Mancuso's testimony confirms the existence of strong ties between the paramilitaries and the state," said Gustavo Gallon, director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists. "It appears deeper than imagined before." Witnesses say Mancuso has blamed victims, portrayed his actions as a "liberation" of Colombia and implicated commanders and military officers who are either dead or jailed. The Mothers of La Candelaria handed in names of around 160 missing relatives they believe were victims of Mancuso's men. "They must tell us what really happened and where the bodies are because that is what we most need," said Maria Eugenia Cobaleda, whose two brothers disappeared in 1998. "If there is no truth, there is no justice."
