Uitlevering van Paramilitary Leiders - een Slag aan Waarheid
Door Constanza Vieira | Veertien vroegere paramilitary leiders werden stil uitgeleverd van Colombia aan de Verenigde Staten vóór dageraad op Dinsdag op drugshandellasten, in een beweging die kritiek van rechten van de mensdeskundigen trok.
De militieleiders waren veilig van uitlevering zolang zij 2005 „rechtvaardigheid en vredeswet“ eerbiedigden die de demobilisatie van de uiterst rechtse paramilitary groepen regeerde, die door de Verenigde Naties van 80 percent van de rechten van de mensmisdaden toegewijd in het vier-decennium van Colombia burgeroorlog worden beschuldigd.
President Álvaro Uribe zei de 14 leiders omdat zij bleven begaand misdaden na het demobiliseren, verstrekten geen volledige bekentenissen zoals vereist in de rechtvaardigheid en vredeswet werden uitgeleverd, en was er niet in geslaagd om hun slachtoffers, „te compenseren door activa te verbergen of hun overdracht te vertragen.“
De „gemanipuleerde waarheid is niet meer waarheid. De waarheid moet zonder berekeningen van timing, zonder vertragingen worden verteld,“ zei de voorzitter.
De „overheid heeft gevraagd, en de Verenigde Staten zijn, dat de rijkdom die de uitgeleverde personen overeenkomen om door overeenstemming met rechters in dat land te overhandigen wordt gewijd aan herstellingen voor slachtoffers in Colombia,“ hij zeiden akkoord gegaan.
„Er zijn niets die zich op de manier van morele herstellingen bevindt die van de Verenigde Staten worden gemaakt,“ toegevoegde Uribe, de zorgen van de slachtoffers van paramilitaries te kalmeren, die bijna vier miljoen mensen omvatten die zeer sterk van hun huizen worden verplaatst.
Genomen door verrassing door de uitlevering, schreeuwden Rodrigo Tovar, alias „Jorge 40 ″, die voor moord van Kankuamo Indiërs in noordelijke Sierra de vervloekte bergen van Nevada wordt gekend DE Santa Marta, en dat zij waren verraden, die zouden schijnen om erop te wijzen dat er geen onderhandeling met de paramilitary leiders voor hun uitlevering was.
Volgens de advocaat van Tovar, Hernando Bocanegra, bekenden de paramilitary leiders aan hun misdaden „beetje bij beetje“ omdat zo de rechtvaardigheid en vredeswet werd ontworpen.
In de bekentenishoorzittingen, had elke overlevende het recht de paramilitary leiders over hun gehouden van degenen persoonlijk om te vragen die waren gedood. De gedaagden antwoordden slechts toen zij persoonlijk van die bepaalde moord op de hoogte waren, en moesten hun ondergeschikten raadplegen toen zij niet, „die de reden voor de vertraging was,“ zeiden de procureur.
„Zij spraken,“ bovengenoemde Bocanegra, die toevoegde dat er een „kalender was die werd gevolgd. 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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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 3:30 pm and is filed under General . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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