Breaking the Grip?
Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia
Map of Colombia
Glossary
AUC: Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia,United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a coalition of most paramilitary groups in Colombia.
CTI: Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación, Technical Investigation Body, an entity attached to the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia and charged with providing investigative and forensic support to the office in criminal cases.
DAS: Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, the national intelligence service, which answers directly to the president of Colombia.
ELN: Ejército de Liberación Nacional, National Liberation Army, a left-wing guerrilla group.
FARC: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia's largest left-wing guerrilla group.
High Commissioner for Peace of Colombia: Alto Comisionado para la Paz, an official advisor to the president of Colombia on peace initiatives. The high commissioner often represents the president in peace negotiations with armed groups.
Office of the Attorney General of Colombia: Fiscalía General de la Nación, a Colombian state entity charged with conducting most criminal investigations and prosecutions. The Office of the Attorney General is formally independent of the executive branch of the government.
Office of the Inspector General of Colombia: Procuraduría General de la Nación, a Colombian state entity charged with representing the interests of citizens before the rest of the state. The office conducts most disciplinary investigations of public officials and monitors criminal investigations and prosecutions, as well as other state agencies' actions.
I. Summary and Recommendations
In Colombia, more than in almost any other country in the Western hemisphere, violence has corroded and subverted democracy. Too often, killings and threats-not free elections or democratic dialogue-are what has determined who holds power, wealth, and influence in the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between paramilitary groups and important sectors of the political system, the military, and the economic elite.
Paramilitary groups have ravaged much of Colombia for two decades. Purporting to fight the equally brutal guerrillas of the left, they have massacred, tortured, forcibly "disappeared", and sadistically killed countless men, women, and children. Wherever they have gone, they have eliminated anyone who opposed them, including thousands of trade unionists, human rights defenders, community leaders, judges, and ordinary civilians. To their enormous profit, they have forced hundreds of thousands of small landowners, peasants, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous persons to flee their families' productive lands. The paramilitaries and their supporters have often taken the abandoned lands, leaving the surviving victims to live in squalor on city fringes, and leaving Colombia second only to Sudan as the country with the most internally displaced people in the world.
With their growing clout aided by drug-trafficking, extortion, and other criminal activities, paramilitaries have made mafia-style alliances with powerful landowners and businessmen in their areas of operation; military units, which have often looked the other way or worked with them; and state officials, including numerous members of the Colombian Congress, who have secured their posts through paramilitaries' ability to corrupt and intimidate.
Through these alliances, paramilitaries and their cronies have acquired massive wealth and political influence, subverting democracy and the rule of law.
But Colombia now has before it a rare opportunity to uncover and break the influence of these networks by holding paramilitaries and their accomplices accountable. In the last two years, paramilitary commanders have started to confess to prosecutors some of the details of their killings and massacres. They have also started to disclose some of the names of high-ranking officials in the security forces who worked with them. And the Colombian Supreme Court has made unprecedented progress in investigating paramilitary infiltration of the Colombian Congress.
This report assesses Colombia's progress towards breaking the influence of and uncovering the truth about paramilitaries' crimes and networks, as well as the many serious obstacles to continued progress.
Colombia's institutions of justice have made historic gains against paramilitary power. But those gains are still tentative and fragile. They are the result of a fortuitous combination of factors, including the independence and courage of a select group of judges and prosecutors, a Constitutional Court ruling that created incentives for paramilitary commanders to disclose some of the truth about their crimes, the actions of Colombian civil society and a handful of journalists, and international pressure on the Colombian government.
The progress that has been made could be rapidly undone, and in fact may already be unraveling. The recent extradition to the United States of several top paramilitary commanders-some of whom had started to talk about their networks- increases the possibility that they will be held accountable for some of their crimes. But it has also interrupted-temporarily, one hopes-the work of Colombian investigators who had been making significant strides prior to the extraditions. To date, only one of the extradited commanders has provided new testimony to Colombian authorities. Within Colombia, several of the most high-profile cases that the Supreme Court had been investigating have slowed down after the congressmen under investigation resigned, thus ensuring that their investigations were transferred to the Office of the Attorney General.
Unfortunately, the administration of President Álvaro Uribe is squandering much of the opportunity to truly dismantle paramilitaries' mafias. While there has been progress in some areas, some of the administration's actions are undermining the investigations that have the best chance of making a difference.
Of greatest concern, the Uribe administration has:
·Repeatedly launched public personal attacks on the Supreme Court and its members in what increasingly looks like a concerted campaign to smear and discredit the Court.
·Opposed and effectively blocked meaningful efforts to reform the Congress to eliminate paramilitary influence.
·Proposed constitutional reforms that would remove the "parapolitics" investigations from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
If the Uribe administration continues on this path, it is likely that the enormous efforts made by Colombia's courts and prosecutors to hold paramilitaries' accomplices accountable will ultimately fail to break their power. Unless it changes course, Colombia may remain a democracy in a formal sense, but violence, threats, and corruption will continue to be common tools for obtaining and exercizing power in the country.
What is at stake in Colombia goes beyond the problem-confronted by many countries-of how to find the truth and secure justice for past atrocities. At stake is the country's future: whether its institutions will be able to break free of the control of those who have relied on organized crime and often horrific human rights abuses to secure power, and whether they will be able to fulfill their constitutional roles unhindered by fear, violence, and fraud.
To ensure meaningful progress, the Uribe administration must cease its attacks on the Supreme Court, and instead provide unequivocal support to investigations of what has come to be known as "parapolitics". It must also take decisive action to reform the Congress and executive agencies that have been infiltrated by paramilitaries. The Office of the Attorney General must also make a more energetic and consistent effort to make progress on the many investigations that were started by Supreme Court but are now under the Attorney General's jurisdiction, as well as on the investigations of members of the military, businesses, and other accomplices implicated by paramilitaries in their confessions.
Court Ruling on the Justice and Peace Law: A New Opportunity
In 2002, paramilitary leaders initiated negotiations with the Colombian government. In exchange for their "demobilization," they sought to avoid real accountability for their atrocities-including extradition to the United States on drug charges-and to keep the bulk of their wealth and power. In the next three years, thousands of persons "demobilized," turning in weapons and entering government reintegration programs. Unless they were already under investigation for serious crimes, the government granted them pardons for their membership in the group.
For those who were already under investigation or who admitted to having committed serious crimes, the Uribe administration drafted the 2005 Justice and Peace Law. That law provided that demobilized individuals responsible for serious crimes, including crimes against humanity and drug trafficking, could benefit from reduced sentences of five to eight years (with additional reductions, those sentences could in practice be lower than three years).
Human Rights Watch and others criticized the law extensively when it was first approved. As initially drafted, the law had no teeth. There was no requirement that paramilitaries give full and truthful confessions of their crimes, or that they disclose information about their criminal networks and collaborators in the public security forces or political systems. Prosecutors would have only 60 days-a very short time frame-to verify whatever paramilitaries chose to say about the crimes they had committed before charging them. Once granted, the reduced sentences could not be overturned, even if it was shown that the paramilitaries had lied, committed new crimes, or failed to turn over their illegally acquired wealth.
Had the Justice and Peace Law been implemented as first drafted, paramilitaries would have had no meaningful incentive to talk about their crimes or accomplices, and any investigation of their crimes would have been quickly cut short.
Everything changed when the Colombian Constitutional Court reviewed the law in mid-2006. The Court approved the law but conditioned its approval on several crucial amendments. As modified by the Court, the Justice and Peace Law now requires full and truthful confessions, provides that reduced sentences may be revoked if paramilitaries lie or fail to comply with various requirements, and has no time limits on investigations. The Court also struck down provisions that would allow paramilitaries to serve reduced sentences outside of prison and to count the time they spent negotiating as time served. Even without further reductions, sentences of five to eight years hardly reflect the gravity of the crimes, which include some of the most heinous atrocities ever committed in Colombia.
While the law still has flaws, the Court transformed it into an instrument that could, if effectively implemented, further victims' rights to truth, reparation, and non-recurrence of abuses. The law could also be a useful tool in breaking paramilitaries' influence in the political system and public security forces.
Paramilitary Leaders' Confessions
The Constitutional Court ruling set the stage for a process in which paramilitaries who confess their crimes could win significantly reduced prison terms, giving them an incentive to collaborate with prosecutors. As a result, throughout 2007 and part of 2008, prosecutors began to obtain valuable information from paramilitary commanders about their crimes and accomplices.
There have been some serious problems in the process of confessions. Until recently the process was hampered by the fact that the law only provided for the assignment of 20 prosecutors to the unit conducting interrogations of the paramilitaries. Under internal and international pressure, the government provided funding for a substantial number of additional prosecutors in early 2008.
It has also become clear that the number of paramilitaries who are going through the Justice and Peace process is much smaller than initially believed. The government has made much of the fact that more than 3,000 purported fighters-including several imprisoned guerrillas whom the government has allowed to "demobilize"-have applied for benefits under the Justice and Peace Law. However, nearly all of those whom prosecutors have started to question have stated that they never meant to apply, and that they wish to withdraw from the process. Because most do not currently have charges pending against them, they will likely go free. They are under no obligation to provide information that might help solve cases of human rights violations, shed light on the web of paramilitary influence, or help account for the disappeared.
At this writing, the number of paramilitaries actively providing information in confessions was under 300.
But some commanders have made significant revelations. Salvatore Mancuso and Ever Veloza, also known as "HH," have provided information that could be used to help solve important cases of human rights abuses. They have also identified some politicians, businessmen, and members of the military who may have collaborated with the paramilitaries.
In early 2008, it was reported that other commanders were poised to start disclosing important information. For example, in April 2008, paramilitary leader Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, also known as "Don Berna," told the Supreme Court that he was prepared to talk about politicians with links to paramilitaries. Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias "Jorge 40," though reticent, was going to face difficult questions thanks to prosecutors' discovery of numerous computer files that provided evidence of his crimes and apparent links to politicians.
The initial revelations sparked hope among the victims of paramilitary groups who sought to participate in the Justice and Peace process-providing information to prosecutors and attending the Justice and Peace confessions-in the belief that they might finally understand what happened to them and their loved ones and why.
Some of the paramilitaries' statements about the role played by members of the military corroborate evidence that Human Rights Watch and others have gathered and reported on for more than 20 years. The close military-paramilitary collaboration in several regions allowed the paramilitaries to commit massacre after massacre of civilians largely unimpeded and with impunity.
For example, Mancuso and "HH" have both said that retired Gen. Rito Alejo del Río collaborated closely with the paramilitaries while he commanded the 17th Brigade, located in the Urabá region in northwestern Colombia, between 1995 and 1997. Human Rights Watch had for years reported on the evidence against Del Río, which was compelling enough to prompt then-President Andrés Pastrana to dismiss Del Río from the army in 1998. The U.S. government had also canceled his visa to the United States in 1999. However, a criminal investigation of Del Río was shut down in 2004 during the tenure of then-Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio (who, as Human Rights Watch reported at the time, undermined or closed several investigations of military-paramilitary collaboration). The new statements by Mancuso and HH have led the Attorney General's Office to open a new investigation of Del Río.
Mancuso also spoke of links with a significant number of politicians, including current Vice-President Francisco Santos and now Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos, as well as several specific congresspersons. Other paramilitary leaders have also spoken of their collaboration with colonels, members of congress, landowners, businessmen, and regional politicians. HH, in particular, has made numerous statements about alleged payments made by multinational banana companies, including Chiquita Brands, to paramilitaries on the coast.
As of February 2008, the Justice and Peace Unit of the Colombian Attorney General's Office had issued information to other prosecutors so investigations would be opened into the vice-president, one cabinet member, eleven senators, eight congressmen, one former congressman, four governors, twenty-seven mayors, one councilman, one deputy, ten "political leaders," ten officials from the Attorney General's Office, thirty-nine members of the army, fifty-two members of the police, fifty-six civilians, and two members of the National Intelligence Service.
On the other hand, the Office of the Attorney General has appeared slow to investigate some of the high-ranking members of the military implicated by paramilitaries. For example, it has yet to open formal investigations of General Iván Ramírez and retired Admiral Rodrigo Quiñónez on allegations that they collaborated with paramilitaries, despite Mancuso's statements against them.
Unanswered Questions
Most of the paramilitary commanders have yet to reach even the second stage of their confessions, during which, according to the Attorney General's Office regulations, they are supposed to provide details about each crime and accomplice. As a result, much of the information they have provided is still only general, and numerous questions about their atrocities, their relationships with the military, politicians, and business sectors, and their financing remain unanswered.
As documented in this report, important questions continue to surround most of the atrocities committed by paramilitaries, including the horrific massacres of hundreds of civilians in La Rochela, El Aro, El Salado, Chengue, and Mapiripán. In those cases there has been evidence for years pointing to the involvement of high-ranking members of the military and others, but only a handful of them have been held accountable. For example:
The Mapiripán Massacre
From July 15 through July 20, 1997, paramilitaries seized the town of Mapiripán, Meta, killing approximately 49 people. A local judge reported hearing the screams of the people the paramilitaries brought to the slaughterhouse to interrogate, torture, and kill throughout the five days the paramilitaries remained in the area. Yet despite the judge's eight telephone pleas for help, neither the police nor the army reacted until the paramilitaries left town.
Subsequent investigations of military involvement in the massacre resulted in the conviction of Col. Lino Sánchez (now deceased). In 2007, a judge acquitted Gen. Jaime Uscátegui, then commander of the army's VII Brigade, on charges of homicide and aggravated kidnapping. The judge sentenced the whistleblower in the case, MajorHernán Orozco Castro, to 40 years in prison, despite evidence that Uscátegui had ignored Orozco's warnings about the massacre.
In his confession, Mancuso has said that paramilitaries made arrangements with the Air Force to fly the paramilitary troops into the region to commit the massacre. He also said that Castaño made arrangements with Col. Lino Sánchez, as well as with a "Colonel Plazas" from Army Intelligence. However, Mancuso has yet to say much about the potential involvement of other members of the public security forces. He has yet to be questioned about Uscátegui or about the potential collaboration of military officers in the airports through which they traveled.
The El Aro Massacre
Over five days in October 1997, an estimated thirty paramilitaries entered the village of El Aro, Antioquia, and proceeded to execute 15 people, including a child, burn all but eight of the village's houses, and force most of the town's 671 residents to flee. Afterwards, 30 people were reported to have been forcibly disappeared.
In his confession, Mancuso confirmed previous evidence indicating that members of the military collaborated in planning the massacre. According to Mancuso, he even went to the IV Brigade in 1996 to meet with General Manosalva (now deceased), who gave him intelligence information about the area in preparation for the massacre. Mancuso also stated that during the massacre the helicopter of the Antioquia governorship was flying overhead, as were army helicopters.
However, Mancuso did not say anything (nor was he asked) about whether the commander of the IV Brigade at the time of the massacre in 1997, Gen. Carlos Ospina Ovalle, knew of or had reason to know of the massacre. (President Uribe appointed Ospina to serve as commander of Colombia's army in 2002 and then as Commander General of the Armed Forces from 2004 to 2007.) Nor has Mancuso been questioned about the allegations recently made by Francisco Villalba, a paramilitary who was convicted of involvement in the massacre and who recently alleged that he observed President