COLOMBIA:
Extradition of
Paramilitary Chiefs - a
Blow to Truth
By Constanza Vieira*
BOGOTÁ (IPS) -
Fourteen former
paramilitary chiefs were
quietly extradited from
Colombia to the United
States before dawn on
Tuesday on drug
trafficking charges, in
a move that drew
criticism from human
rights experts.
The militia chiefs were
safe from extradition as
long as they respected
the 2005 "justice and
peace law" that governed
the demobilisation of
the far-right
paramilitary groups,
which are blamed by the
United Nations for 80
percent of the human
rights crimes committed
in Colombia’s
four-decade civil war.
President Álvaro Uribe
said the 14 leaders were
extradited because they
continued committing
crimes after
demobilising, were not
providing full
confessions as required
by the justice and peace
law, and had failed to
compensate their
victims, "by hiding
assets or delaying their
handover."
"Manipulated truth is no
longer truth. Truth has
to be told without
calculations of timing,
without delays," said
the president.
"The government has
requested, and the
United States has
agreed, that the wealth
that the extradited
persons agree to hand
over through accords
with judges in that
country be dedicated to
reparations for victims
in Colombia," he said.
"There is nothing
standing in the way of
moral reparations being
made from the United
States," added Uribe, to
calm the worries of the
victims of the
paramilitaries, who
include nearly four
million people forcibly
displaced from their
homes.
Taken by surprise by the
extradition, Rodrigo
Tovar, alias "Jorge 40",
known for killing off
Kankuamo Indians in the
northern Sierra Nevada
de Santa Marta
mountains, cursed and
shouted that they had
been betrayed, which
would seem to indicate
that there was no
negotiation with the
paramilitary chiefs for
their extradition.
According to Tovar’s
lawyer, Hernando
Bocanegra, the
paramilitary leaders
were confessing to their
crimes "little by
little" because that is
how the justice and
peace law was designed.
In the confession
hearings, each survivor
had the right to
personally ask the
paramilitary chiefs
about their loved ones
who had been killed. The
defendants only
responded when they
personally knew about
that particular murder,
and had to consult with
their subordinates when
they didn’t, "which was
the reason for the
delay," said the
attorney.
"They were talking,"
said Bocanegra, who
added that there was a
"timeframe that was
being followed. In the
stage of confession,
they had gotten to the
chapter of murders,
massacres and genocidal
crimes."
Some had started to give
details on joint actions
carried out by
paramilitary groups and
military units, another
point on the agenda.
Others had already
announced that they
would implicate local
businessmen in their
testimony.
Among those who were
extradited Tuesday were
several top leaders,
like Salvatore Mancuso,
Diego Murillo, alias
"Don Berna" -- the heir
to late druglord Pablo
Escobar -- and the
commander of the
paramilitary militias on
the north coast of the
Sierra Nevada de Santa
Marta, Hernán Giraldo.
Iván Cepeda, spokesman
for the Movement of
Victims of Crimes of the
State (MOVICE),
complained to the press
that the extraditions
would "seriously affect"
the rights of survivors,
and said they were aimed
at keeping the
paramilitary leaders
from continuing to
provide the names of
military, political and
business accomplices and
allies.
Eduardo Carreño, vice
president of the José
Alvear Restrepo Lawyers
Collective, a human
rights group, told IPS
that "this move confirms
what we have said from
the start: that a
Congress with a strong
paramilitary presence
legislated on its own
behalf, and that the
victims are the
forgotten ones in this
process."
More than 60 lawmakers,
nearly all of them pro-Uribe,
are under investigation
for their ties to the
paramilitaries, as part
of what has been dubbed
the "parapolitics
scandal."
They include the
rightwing president’s
cousin and main
political ally, former
senator Mario Uribe.
Carreño said that "no
one has ever talked to
the victims, offered
them guarantees, or made
sure that there will be
no repetition" of war
crimes like torture,
massacres, forced
disappearances, targeted
killings of community
leaders, activists and
trade unionists, and the
forced displacement of
rural families and
communities to seize
their land.
According to the
paramilitaries and their
defenders, the war
crimes were committed
against "subversives,"
people who collaborated
with the leftist
insurgent groups that
emerged in the 1960s.
"To think that
reparations for the
victims can be achieved
from the United States
is a total fallacy. And
it is impossible for the
victims to take out
passports and apply for
visas" to the United
States, said Carreño,
referring to the
possibility of survivors
and family members of
victims attempting to
seek justice in that
country.
"This is a mockery,"
Gustavo Gallón, director
of the Colombian
Commission of Jurists,
another leading human
rights organisation,
told IPS.
"It was clearly spelled
out: if they were really
committing crimes after
demobilising -- as they
were doing -- they were
to be referred to the
ordinary courts, as
established by the
justice and peace law,"
where they would face
sentences of up to 40
years rather than the
light sentences, of no
more than eight years,
provided for by the
agreement with the
government, he said.
The Uribe administration
says it will send
prosecutors and lawyers
to the United States to
collect the testimony of
the former paramilitary
chiefs, in order for the
justice and peace law
process to continue.
Santiago Rodríguez, the
former lawyer of
Colombian drug
trafficker Hernando
Gómez Bustamante, who
was extradited to the
United States in
mid-2007 after being
deported to Colombia
from Cuba, pointed out
that a person cannot be
tried for the same crime
in two different places.
Furthermore, said
Rodríguez, everything
that the extradited
paramilitaries say from
this moment on can be
used against them.
"I would not allow a
client of mine to talk"
about crimes committed
in Colombia other than
drug trafficking
offences, for which the
14 were extradited, the
Cuban-American lawyer
said in a telephone
interview from the
United States with the
Bogotá station W Radio.
He said he would only
allow his client to talk
if there were a written
agreement approved by
the U.S. Justice
Department guaranteeing
protection from
prosecution for other
crimes.
He pointed out that
according to the U.S.
Federal Rules of
Evidence, testimony on
other crimes provided by
defendants during a
trial -- like the kind
of confessions required
by the justice and peace
law -- can be used
against them.
According to Rodríguez,
that means the former
paramilitary chiefs
extradited to the United
States should not have
to cooperate with the
Colombian justice
system, which could
complicate their legal
situation in the United
States. "Protections
would have to be put in
writing," he reiterated.
Leftwing Senator Gustavo
Petro said President
Uribe "dealt several
blows in one" with the
extraditions.
"The first blow," he
told IPS, "is against
truth."
"If Uribe says there is
a pact with the United
States" for the
prosecution of war
crimes to continue in
that country, which does
not recognise the
jurisdiction of the
International Criminal
Court, "it is a secret
pact, because no one
knows about it. The only
thing the U.S. is
interested in is curbing
drug trafficking," he
said.
"The second blow is
against the victims and
the possibility of
compensation, which
becomes even more remote
if the truth is not
revealed," and "the
third is against
Colombian justice,"
because with this
decision, the president
is "disregarding the
Colombian justice system
and recognising the U.S.
system," said the
senator.
The National Commission
for Reparations and
Reconciliation (CNRR),
created by the justice
and peace law, called
for "a cooperation
agreement between the
U.S. Justice Department
and Colombia’s
Attorney-General’s
Office, so that the
rights of the victims
are placed in a central
spot on the judicial
agenda."
Another agreement that
should be reached, said
the CNRR, would provide
a guarantee that the
victims "can move ahead
with civil and criminal
lawsuits against the
extradited paramilitary
chiefs and thus achieve
respect for their
rights."
* With additional
reporting from Helda
Martínez. |
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