COLOMBIA:
Hostages’ Deaths Still a
Mystery, One Year On
By
Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ (IPS) -
Eleven wax palms,
Colombia’s national
tree, will be planted in
the botanical garden in
the capital in memory of
11 regional lawmakers
who were killed a year
ago after spending more
than five years as
hostages in the hands of
the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC)
guerrillas.
The legislators were
part of the group of
hostages held by the
FARC with the aim of
swapping them for
hundreds of imprisoned
insurgents. Still held
captive in remote jungle
camps today are former
presidential candidate
Ingrid Betancourt, who
holds dual
French-Colombian
citizenship, 17 military
officers and
non-commissioned
officers, 20 policemen
and three U.S. military
contractors.
One regional
parliamentary deputy,
Sigifredo López,
survived when his 11
colleagues were killed
in mysterious
circumstances a year
ago, because he was not
with the group at the
time. According to the
FARC, the incident
occurred on Jun. 18,
2007.
The 11 wax palms (Ceroxylon
quindiuense) presided
over a ceremony held
Wednesday to pay homage
to the legislators in
Plaza de Bolívar,
Bogotá’s central square.
Alongside each potted
tree was a photo of one
of the deputies and
thousands of flowers
brought by
schoolchildren.
Two massive nationwide
marches were held in the
last year to protest the
FARC’s practice of
kidnapping and taking
hostages. But on
Wednesday, the square
was half empty. The
families of the dead
hostages attended a
special mass in Cali,
the capital of the
western province of
Valle del Cauca, where
the regional deputies
were from.
"I don't know who is
worse, the kidnappers or
those who have forgotten
about us," Juan Carlos
Narváez, the former head
of the Valle del Cauca
regional assembly, who
was one of the hostages
killed last year, said
in the last video
provided by the FARC to
prove that the lawmakers
were still alive.
Narváez and the others
were buried on Sept. 11,
after a lengthy delay in
handing over their
bodies to the
International Committee
of the Red Cross.
One year later, the
circumstances in which
the 11 hostages were
killed have not been
clarified. According to
an investigation by an
Organisation of American
States (OAS)
international forensic
commission, the hostages
died from multiple
gunshot wounds, with
bullets fired from
different directions and
several kinds of guns.
Their bodies were
preserved in good
condition by the
guerrillas, who handed
them over far from the
spot where they were
killed.
Colombian President
Álvaro Uribe refused to
accept the services of
the International
Humanitarian
Fact-Finding Commission
established by the first
supplementary protocol
to the 1949 Geneva
Convention on
International
Humanitarian Law.
In an email message sent
to IPS on Sept. 2, 2007,
Colombia’s High
Commissioner for Peace
Luis Carlos Restrepo
stated that "information
gathered by intelligence
bodies and handed over
to the Attorney
General’s Office points
to a confrontation
between two guerrilla
structures, Front 60
that was guarding the
deputies and Front 29
that operates in that
area."
"The deputies were
apparently killed on the
order of alias ‘El
Grillo’, who believed
that a military rescue
attempt was taking
place. After the
deputies were killed,
their bodies were
manipulated and
transferred to the spot
where they were later
handed over," said the
official.
Restrepo wrote IPS to
express his disagreement
with the report
published by this agency
in August 2007,
according to which the
hostages were killed in
heavy fighting between
an elite military unit
and the insurgent group
that was moving the
hostages after a
"suspicious desertion"
by 17 to 19 guerrillas,
according to a source
close to the FARC.
The rebel group had
reported that the
hostages were killed on
Jun. 18 in the midst of
crossfire "with an
unidentified military
group."
In addition, the laptops
that the Colombian
government claims to
have seized at the rebel
camp of FARC negotiator
"Raúl Reyes", which was
bombed in Ecuador on
Mar. 1 by Colombian
forces, contained two
different versions of
the incident.
One email was supposedly
written by "Alfonso
Cano", who is now the
group’s top leader, to
then FARC chief "Manuel
Marulanda", who died of
a heart attack in March.
In the message, which
coincides with
Restrepo’s version, Cano
said that a FARC unit
mistook the rebels
guarding the hostages
for members of the
smaller National
Liberation Army (ELN --
known as "elenos"), and
launched an attack.
"Good afternoon comrade.
Because of a disastrous
confusion with another
FARC unit, who mistook
them for elenos and
attacked, the deputies’
guards executed 11 of
the 12 hostages because
they thought they were
being attacked by the
army. A grave mistake
that will cause us many
problems," says the
email message, according
to the Defence Ministry.
In news reports,
however, the quote
appeared with different
wording.
The Ministry reported
that Cano proposed
"drawing" the security
forces to the spot where
the legislators were
killed, to implicate
them in the killing.
But in another message,
Marulanda allegedly
gives instructions to
"report that the
prisoners’ guards
deserted along with the
hostages, and that in
the persecution, all of
them were killed in the
midst of combat, and we
are prepared to hand
over the bodies."
Yet another version that
has recently emerged
refers to "a kind of
alliance between the
FARC and drug
traffickers, which led
to the murder of the
hostages by a group of
‘narcos’ to generate the
problem with the
guerrillas and push them
out of the Valle del
Cauca," journalist
Carlos Lozano, who the
government appointed as
a negotiator for talks
on the hostages’
release, told IPS.
Lozano, editor of Voz,
the Communist Party
weekly paper, wrote that
the firefight was
between the FARC unit
guarding the hostages
and "Los Magníficos, an
elite police unit
trained by Israelis and
the British for
precisely this kind of
surprise attack."
But the rightwing Uribe
administration staunchly
denies that any military
rescue attempt was
launched.
"At any rate, at this
point all of these
versions are merely
speculation, all of
them. And none of them
can be ruled out," said
Lozano.
Voz also published, on
Feb. 13, an interview
with a former insurgent
who deserted the FARC in
1994 and turned himself
in to the Luciano
D'Elhuyar army battalion
in the northeastern
province of Santander.
The former rebel said an
operation had been
planned for June 2007,
in which a group of FARC
deserters recruited to
work with the security
forces was to play a key
role.
He said the military
made contact in the
Valle del Cauca with
"several mid-level
commanders of Front 30
(of the FARC), who
provided them with
information on the
deputies’ location."
"The intention was for a
special forces group,
which would go into
action without wearing
army insignia, to launch
a sudden attack to
rescue the hostages, but
it would not be
presented as a military
operation," he said.
The deputies were to be
handed over to a group
of FARC deserters who,
"with the camouflaged
special forces among
them, would immediately
proceed to ‘contact’ the
peace commissioner’s
office and turn
themselves in, so that
when the surrender
occurred, it would look
like we FARC fighters
had gotten tired of the
war and decided to
reinsert ourselves in
society, turning over
the hostages as well,"
he said.
But "what was supposed
to happen on Jun. 7 --
the rescue and our
posing as dissident
members of FARC --
didn't occur," he added.
"When the operation was
aborted, the main
sponsors of the project
disappeared, failing to
pay us what we were
promised, and some
deserters died in
strange conditions," he
said.
Lozano, who had been
contacted by the source,
said that
"unfortunately, we have
lost track of this
demobilised insurgent.
We wanted to continue
talking with him to
obtain further
information."
"The demobilised fighter
knew where to find us,
and he gave us this
version. I was the first
to talk to him, and in
that initial
conversation he told me
he had quite a lot of
information on what
happened to the
deputies," said the
journalist.
In the subsequent
interview, the source
focused on the
"recruitment" of FARC
deserters. "We had
agreed with him to first
delve into that part and
then continue with the
question of the
deputies," but the
interview had to be cut
off, "and we arranged a
second meeting with him,
which never took place."
"The Attorney General’s
Office did not want to
include him in the
witness protection
programme," said Lozano,
who believes the man
fled the country, as he
had intended to do. Even
the FARC was after him.
"But it would be really
good to talk to him
again. I believe that
man has privileged
information on (what
happened to) the
deputies," he added. |
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