Carlos Castaño Gil

On 23 August 2006, Colombia's Attorney General publicly ordered the capture of his brother Vicente Castaño and seven other individuals, accusing them of being involved in Carlos Castaño's apparent death. Alleged witnesses to the crime stated that Castaño's body was apparently dismembered and incinerated.

Castaño's skeleton was recovered from a shallow grave on 1 September 2006, and identified through DNA testing by the Colombian government authorities. His brother's second lieutenant named Jesús Roldán AKA "MonoLeche", a former Popular Liberation Army (Ejército Popular de Liberación) guerrilla who later joined the paramilitaries, confessed to his murder and led authorities to the grave.

Castaño was killed on 16 April 2004. Acting AUC commanders claimed initially that there was an accidental exchange of gunfire between his bodyguards and a separate group of paramilitary fighters.

The possible death of the AUC co-founder remained in the air and was the subject of wild and rampant speculation. One of the rumours, dating from June 1, 2004, stated that unidentified diplomatic sources told the AFP agency that Castaño may have been spirited away to either Syria or Egypt, via Panama, allegedly with U.S. assistance. No specific reasoning or details regarding this claim were produced and the parties allegedly involved separately denied their participation.

On 24 September 2002, the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Castaño which accused him of trafficking over 17 tons of cocaine into the United States. Castaño announced that he would give himself up for trial in the United States and would accept his participation in numerous crimes, though he resented his being personally linked to the drug trade.

In a biographical work published in 2001, he admitted to having friendly relations with the high Catholic clergy and political leaders. He added that "the Americans tolerated" the paramilitary groups and had the support of the Colombian national army.

Castaño stated on Colombian television in 2000 that 70 percent of AUC funds came from narcotrafficking.

In 1997, Castaño later founded an umbrella organization of paramilitaries operating in Colombia known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The AUC demobilised in 2006 admitting to several brutal murders to the Colombian population. The AUC was accused by human rights organisations of committing atrocities, and it has openly admitted to its involvement in the drug trade. The AUC was listed by the US Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation. AUC was disbanded after then Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez reached a peace agreement with reduced terms for its members.

In a 1996 interview with writer Robin Kirk, later published in More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America's War in Colombia (PublicAffairs: New York, 2003), Castaño acknowledged that the men under his command committed "excesses", but defended them as necessary in Colombia's conflict. "Look, the guerrillas hide themselves within the civilian population, they manipulate the population". In a September 1997 interview in El Tiempo newspaper, Castaño admitted responsibility for the Mapiripán massacre.

He was introduced to the Medellin Cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar by his brother Fidel, but he was against drugs. Castaño received combat training from his brother, from army officers and members of the paramilitary group as well as from the Israeli mercenary Yair Klein. Of this training came out the order for the extermination against the UP between the 1985-96

Carlos Castaño Gil (16 May 1965 – 16 April 2004) was a Colombian paramilitary leader. who was a founder of the Peasant Self-Defenders of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU), a far-right paramilitary organisation in Colombia and a former member of the Medellin Cartel. Castaño and his brothers Fidel and Vicente founded the ACCU (and its previous incarnations) after their father was kidnapped and killed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in association with other enemies or victims of the guerrillas. The ACCU later became one of the founding members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).