human rights in colombia. truths and lies

R E V E L A T I O N S C O L L E C T I O N

Truths and Lies

HUMAN

RIGHTS

IN COLOMBIA

Revelations CollectionHuman Rights in ColombiaTruths and Lies

© Verdad ColombiaISBN 958-33-7156-4

Cover Photograph: Dora FrancoInterior Photographs: Dora Franco, File Magazine Cambio, Rodrigo Obregón, Luis Fernando CastrillónPrinting: OP Gráficas

Bogotá, December 2004Printed in Colombia

CONTENTSVerdad Colombia

7 WHAT IS HAPPENING IN COLOMBIA

17 TRUTHS AND LIES

37 THE CASE OF GENERAL DEL RÍO

51 THE CASE OF GENERAL FERNANDO MILLÁN PÉREZ

55 THE TRUTH

65 THE CASE OF CAPTAIN GERMÁN PATAQUIVA

69 HUMAN RIGHTS IN COLOMBIA: HOW RESPONSIBLEIS THE STATE?70 THE UNITED NATIONS REPORT

82 THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY PERSPECTIVE

84 CONCLUSION

87 HOW IMPARTIAL ARE HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS?93 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

95 HUMANS RIGHTS WATCH -AMERICAS

97 WASHINGTON OFFICE ON LATIN AMERICA (WOLA)

99 A SENTENCE ISSUED BY THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OFHUMAN RIGHTS

5

VERDAD COLOMBIA

• These young girls left the town of La Macarena, Meta Department, along with acoffin bearing their mother’s body. The woman and six other peasants were

murdered two days earlier by a FARC death squad.

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is a federation of 22 non-govern-mental organizations located in different parts ofColombia. It was founded in 2001, in Bogotá, to de-fend democracy, the values of freedom, human rightsand preservation of the environment. It is affiliatedwith no political party and does not receive govern-ment support.

Verdad Colombia has organized a variety of conti-nental forums and meetings on issues such as terror-ism, State shortcomings and neo-populism in LatinAmerica, with the participation of eminent writers,essayists, political leaders and former Latin Americanpresidents, both liberals and social democrats. Theseevents have had the support of organizations such as

6 H U M A N R I G H T S I N C O L O M B I A

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation, The Atlas Eco-nomic Research Foundation, the Fundación para elAnálisis y los Estudios Sociales (FAES), The Interna-tional Freedom Foundation (IFF), The Inter-Ameri-can Forum and The Heritage Foundation.

With this publication, the directors of Verdad Colom-bia have tried, above all, to provide an in-depth lookat allegations of human rights violations in Colom-bia, to verify their justification, and to correct obvi-ous distortions. Hopefully, it will give European jour-nalists, academics and political leaders the facts andinformation they need for an objective analysis of thesituation in Colombia, free of political bias.

There are truths that cannot be denied. Colom-bia is a country where the most essential humanrights, beginning with the right to life, have beenviolated continually for years on end by illegalarmed groups. No other interpretation is possible,considering the 23,013 homicides reported dur-ing 2003, along with 3,387 kidnappings for ran-som, 121 massacres and nearly 175,270 displacedpeople, on top of the two million who were al-ready displaced. These are people from the coun-tryside who were forced to abandon their homesfor fear of being killed by FARC or ELN guerril-las, or by the United Self-defense Forces of Co-lombia (AUC), commonly called paramilitary

WHAT IS HAPPENINGIN COLOMBIA

Who is to blamefor the human

rights violations inColombia?

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groups. Yet, it is also true that kidnapping declinedfor the first time in 2003, in this case by 22,4%; homi-cides were down by 22%; massacres by 49% and forceddisplacement by 49%.

The situation in Colombia is linked to the armed con-flict between the Colombian military and rebel groupswho, for the last 40 years or more, have mounted anarmed struggle to replace the nation’s political and eco-nomic system with a Marxist-Leninist regime. Condi-tions were further complicated in the mid-eighties byemergence of the United Self-defense Forces of Co-lombia, also known as paramilitary groups. Like theguerrillas, they too have ties to the drug traffic and usethe same methods as the FARC and the ELN, but toassassinate unionists, Leftists leaders and peasants theybelieve are involved with guerrilla organizations.

Complaints about human rights violations are usuallycollected and circulated abroad by non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) that have a long history of thisactivity, not only with respect to Colombia but forother hot spots as well. Generally, the U.S. Depart-ment of State, the countries of the European Union,and the mass media echo these complaints, which alsoare addressed by the Colombian government from themoment its public prosecution and supervisory bod-ies (the Inspector General’s Office, the ProsecutorGeneral’s Office and the Office of the Ombudsman)begin to investigate these claims.

9W H A T I S H A P P E N I N G I N C O L O M B I A

The Colombian government is obliged to admit thatmany crimes go unpunished. Justice is slow to act,bogged down by red tape and overwhelmed by anenormous backlog of cases that prolongs and ham-pers a decision or verdict. The typical paradox in acountry like Colombia is that violence and insecurityexist simultaneously with an overabundance of lawsand regulations, judicial instances, interpretations andcontroversies that usually end up making the State dan-gerously unworkable.

Alongside this obvious situation is another problem:how to determine objectively, and with the necessaryrigor, just who is responsible for the constant humanrights violations registered in Colombia. There is ab-solutely no certainty on this point. Many NGOs thatare regarded as credible by the United States govern-ment, the governments of the European Union andeven the United Nations attribute 77% of the humanrights violations in Colombia to the State, and acceptonly 23% as the work of leftist terrorists. To sub-stantiate this figure, they credit the State with viola-tions committed by paramilitaries, giving the impres-sion that paramilitarism is part of an official policy.

Based on its own studies, the Colombian governmentsays that 84.5 % of the violations (massacres, selec-tive killings, kidnappings, disappearances) are commit-ted by guerrillas (primarily from the FARC and theELN); 13.9% by the United Self-defense Forces of


• FARC, ELN and AUC attacks cause destruction and deathto thousands of Colombians.

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Colombia, also known as paramilitaries, and just 1.6%by official agents (only 4% of the complaints filedwith the Prosecutor General’s Office involve mem-bers of the security forces). This last percentage, whichis clearly inadmissible and still susceptible to reduc-tion, could be considered low for military forces dur-ing wartime. On the other hand, if paramilitarism wereaccepted as an instrument of the State, Colombiawould be in a league with Sri Lanka, Sudan, NorthKorea and Iraq under Sadam Hussein on a blacklistof nondemocractic countries that violate humanrights.

Although non-governmental organizations generallyhave more credibility than governments with respectto the information they put out, it is important to scru-


Although NGO’susually enjoy more

credibility thangovernments, in

the Colombiancase the validity

of their accusationsshould be

examined carefully.

tinize the origin and validity of many of the com-plaints about human rights violations in Colombia.Perhaps nowhere in the world is this issue more ques-tioned. As to the opinion of local and internationalNGOs, there are studies and documents that seem tosuggest an attempt at disinformation. This is under-stood not as a lack of information on cases reportedto the authorities, but as a distortion of the facts.These studies, which are usually based on concreteevidence, remind us that the subversion defines itsstrategy in Colombia as a “combination of all formsof struggle”. In other words, the guerrillas act mili-tarily and on the political, legal and international scene.This being the case, human rights could be used as aweapon of war by taking advantage of the country’slegal system to challenge the military actions of se-nior officers in a court of law.

Even if the accusations prove to be unfounded, theInspector General, the Prosecutor General and theOmbudsman are obliged, by the constitution, to reg-ister and investigate them. The officer who is accused- and there are now more than three thousand indi-viduals in this position - must give a statement, pro-vide evidence, and oftentimes pay a defense lawyerout of his own pocket, while the investigation is un-derway. Those who have analyzed the so-called po-litical war mounted by the subversion believe the goalis to secure a conviction, dismissal from service, or atleast an inhibiting effect intended to avoid combat or


Even before aninvestigation canbe conducted,local NGOssympathetic toMarxist thinkingor the “liberationtheology” rush tocirculate theseaccusations inand outside thecountry.However, theynever publicizenews ofacquittals.

offensive action against the enemy. This is a formaltactic of war, and a very effective one. Before an in-vestigation can be conducted to determine if an ac-cusation is true or false, local NGOs rush in to col-lect and circulate it throughout the country and inter-nationally. Even if there is only one source, the wayaccusations of human rights violations are exchangedamong NGOs provides for coincidences that makethem particularly believable to international human-rights organizations and even to the U.S. Departmentof State. The impact on the person under investiga-tion is overwhelming. In the eyes of the internationalcommunity, he is forever accused of having violatedsomeone’s human rights, even if his innocence isproven eventually by a criminal court in Colombia.In short, the accusation is publicized, but not the ac-quittal. Worse yet, the case continues to be used in-definitely as an indication of the violations commit-ted in Colombia.

This does not mean that every officer who is accusedis innocent. There are a small percentage of Colom-bian military personnel who have been investigatedand found guilty of violations or complicity with para-military groups. The Colombian government declaresthey are subject to criminal prosecution and mentionscases where officers are either in custody or serving acriminal sentence. More than one may have escapedtrial and conviction for human rights violations and,in these cases, NGOs are justified and to be com-


mended for speaking out against them. Unfortunately,NGOs often mix saints with sinners and must be calledon to verify the sources of their information and toscrutinize the complaints they receive.

How feasible is this? Some NGOs, such as Pax Christi,have managed to discover attempts at manipulationand to identify those actually responsible for humanrights violations, by investigating cases in Colombia.Their accusations on frightening issues such as kid-nappings in Colombia have been reported in Europe,portraying the true terrorist nature of organizationslike the FARC. But this is an exception. The accusa-tions leveled by other NGOs are distorted by emo-tional and ideological bias. They clearly feel the weightof historical events, very real indeed, which recall themany violations (disappearances, assassinations andtorture) committed by military personnel over a pe-riod of decades, under the cover of fierce militarydictatorships in Latin America. This view of the mili-tary, which remains embedded in the minds and psycheof academics, journalists and leftist political leaders,somehow makes any accusation against a member ofthe Colombian military seem credible. This same his-torical-emotional distortion prompts these NGOs toassociate guerrillas in Colombia with anachronistic im-ages of rebel groups and leaders in the sixties, such asCastro and El Ché.

The ideological ingredient or bias is even more dan-gerous. The fact is that, at least in Colombia, most


NGOs supposedly dedicated to human rights are ideo-logically aligned with and committed to radical leftistthinking, either Marxist or the so-called theology ofliberation. With a broad network of communicatingvessels, these organizations find a solid base of sup-port among similar non-governmental organizationsbased in Europe.

The NGOs run by the clergy have never denied theirsympathies with the theology of liberation, which wasdefined succinctly by Father Aldo J. Büntig as “thedynamic incorporation of Catholicism into the revo-lutionary process spearheaded by our oppressedpeoples.” This profile, which inevitably coincides withguerrilla ideology, at least in terms of the subversion’sobjectives, if not its methods, explains the wealth ofreports on human rights produced by these organiza-tions and the preferential, if not exclusive way theyimplicate members of the armed forces and para-militaries. Only rarely are guerrillas accused of hu-man rights violations, despite their constant and mur-derous terrorist activity. Equally distorted are theNGOs whose members have ties with the Commu-nist Party, a perfectly legal group that shares the ideaof attaining power through a combination of all formsof struggle.

These misguided ingredients demand a more criticaland objective analysis of human rights in Colombiaon the part of the European mass media, academic


• Millions of Colombians demonstrate in the streets to protest against the violationof Human Rights by illegal armed groups.

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centers, democratic political leaders and intellectuals.The truth must be separated from the lies in the ac-cusations being circulated by NGOs. This book, whichis the result of careful research on the principal accu-sations and attacks leveled in recent years, tries to de-termine which are based on fact and which are not.If defense of human rights is to have the honest andgenuinely supervisory dimension it requires, this iscrucial.

TRUTHS AND LIES

• After three years ofunsuccessful talks, the country

realized that FARC had noreal desire for peace. Fo

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Colombia’s internal war intensified in 2002, following the February 20 collapse ofthree years of formal talks between the government and the county’s largest guerrillagroup.

Human Rights Watch World Report 2003

The indication is that guerrilla violence was at a lowduring the so-called peace talks and their breakdownaccelerated the war. However, in 2001, while formaltalks were still in progress, there were 24,608 reportedassassinations, 4,364 kidnappings, 223 massacres,1,034 terrorist attacks and 265,000 civilians forciblydisplaced by the FARC, the ELN, or the paramilitaries.


The talks ended when the Teófilo Forero Mobil Col-umn of the FARC kidnapped a passenger plane car-rying Senator Eduardo Gechem Turbay. This was thelast straw. It clearly showed the FARC never wantedpeace. The demilitarized zone - 42,000 square kilo-meters of Colombian territory devoid of military op-erations and reserved exclusively for the talks - be-came a base from which the FARC chiefs of staff ranthe war in the rest of the country. It was where kid-napped hostages were held, ransoms were paid, ter-rorist groups were trained under the supervision ofIRA agents, and arms were stockpiled. The demilita-rized zone also was a sanctuary for growing and pro-cessing illegal drugs, and had airstrips from whichnarcotics were shipped to the United States and otherparts of the world.

The end of formal talks did not intensify so-calledacts of war, which continued at the same pace.

Paramilitary groups operating with the tolerance and often the support of unitswithin Colombia’s military were linked to massacres (defined in Colombia as thekilling of three of more people at the same place and time), selective killings anddeath threats. There were numerous and credible reports of joint military-paramilitaryoperations and the sharing of intelligence and propaganda, including army-generatedappeals to guerrillas to turn themselves in. Throughout Colombia, paramilitariescontinued to move uniformed and heavily armed troops unhindered past militaryinstallations.


19T R U T H S A N D L I E S

The fact thatuniformed

paramilitary troopsmove unhinderedis not because the

governmenttolerates theirpresence, but

because of thecountry’s intricategeography and the

absence ofsecurity forces in

remote areas. TheFARC and the

ELN do the same.

This is not entirely accurate. Although there was para-military action in 2001, such as the incidents atChengue (Sucre) and San Carlos (Antioquia), the firstof which left 27 dead and the second, 13, these op-erations were not conducted with the tolerance andsupport of the Colombian army. Nor were there jointoperations between the military and paramilitarygroups, or shared intelligence and propaganda, suchas calls from the army for guerrillas to surrender. Noris there any truth to the claim that, throughout Colom-bia, paramilitaries continued to move uniformed and heavilyarmed troops unhindered past military installations. The truthis that Colombia’s complicated terrain and the short-age of law enforcement officials in many parts of thecountry enables not only paramilitaries but also FARCand ELN guerrillas to move about freely. Some mili-tary units in certain areas have had ties with self-de-fense groups, as revealed by the observatory of thePresidential Program for Human Rights and Interna-tional Humanitarian Law. The State’s prosecutor andthe military system of criminal justice have been no-tified of these incidents.

Compared to past years, the government reported more clashes between its troopsand paramilitaries, and more arrests of suspected paramilitaries. Yet, paramilitariesappeared more numerous and militarily stronger than ever. They claimed to haveover ten thousand armed and trained members, a number not disputed by thegovernment or other sources.



• Massacre carried out by so-called paramilitaries (illegal self defense groups).

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.Right on the first count, wrong on the second. TheColombian military has fought paramilitaries exactlyas they combat other illegal armed groups. Contraryto the suggestion in the preceding paragraph, the in-crease in paramilitaries is not due to official tolerance,but to guerrilla action and constant desertion fromguerrilla organizations, which have added to the ranksof peasant self-defense forces. They likely have tenthousand members, just as the FARC have 17,000 andthe ELN has 5,000. However, the government is inno position to confirm or dispute these figures.

President Uribe has always held open the possibilityof peace talks with any illegal armed group, on theright or left, with the sole condition that the groupcease all terrorist activity. The AUC, the misnamedparamilitaries, accepted the proposal. Neither theFARC nor the ELN have done so. As a result of ne-


gotiations with the government’s Peace Commissioner,1425 men of the Catatumbo Block of theAutodefensas (paramilitaries) under SalvatoreMancuso turned in their weapons on December 10,2004. Smaller groups had done so some months be-fore. In total, 3113 illegal self defense force combat-ants have demobilized, and talks continue with otherparamilitary groups. This is the largest demobiliza-tion of any illegal armed group in the country’s his-tory. Many of the leaders of these groups, however,are accused of crimes covered by international law(crimes against humanity) and must remain in a des-ignated area while Congress passes a law to establishappropriate legal measures to deal with their cases.

President Álvaro Uribe Vélez took office on 7 August 2002, after winningColombia’s presidential elections on 26 May. Since then, national and internationalhuman rights organizations have expressed deep concern over the security strategyadopted by the government, which has proven to be totally inadequate in dealingwith the serious humanitarian and human rights crises affecting Colombia, a countrythat has suffered 40 years of armed conflict between government forces - aided by theparamilitaries - and armed opposition groups. As opposed to dealing with the crisis,this strategy only further aggravates a humanitarian tragedy that is already frighteningin and of itself.

Amnesty International Report 2003

This is a totally biased statement founded on subjec-tive assessments as opposed to facts. Rather than ex-


Using the term“armed oppositiongroups” whenreferring toorganizationsclassified asterrorists by theEuropean Union,as AmnestyInternationaldoes, capriciouslyignores theirreal nature.

pressing concern over the 23 thousand assassinationsand the 3,387 kidnappings perpetrated last year by il-legal armed groups, human rights organizations inColombia and abroad are troubled by the measuresderived from President Uribe’s Democratic SecurityPolicy. Thanks to these measures, he obtained an ab-solute majority of the votes in the 2002 presidentialelection and there was a subsequent decline inkidnappings and homicides (22.4% and 49%, respec-tively). Uribe´s strategy is to protect the civilian popu-lation by strengthening the police, creating a networkof informants throughout the country, training “peas-ant” soldiers, offering rewards for reports of terror-ist acts, and implementing a host of other measuresthat are similar, but much less drastic than thoseadopted to combat insecurity and terrorism in demo-cratic countries like Spain, France, Great Britain andthe United States. Pious use of the term “armed op-position groups” when referring to organizations thatdestroy entire villages, kidnap elderly citizens, womenand children, plant car bombs on crowded streets inmajor cities, and kill judges, mayors and journalistswho do not share their beliefs is a cunning way todetract from their true nature. The report does notsay why the defensive measures adopted by the newgovernment, pursuant to the Constitution and the law,are aggravating the human tragedy in Colombia, whenin fact, they are containing and reducing it. Accord-ing to the law, these measures are to be reviewed byCongress and the Constitutional Court.


Amnesty International is seriously concerned about a series of measures destined toundermine the solid mechanisms and institutional safeguards for human rightsintroduced during the last decade, such as the Constitutional Court, the Ombudsmanand the municipal representatives.

Amnesty International Report, 2003

False. The Colombian government has done nothing toeliminate the Constitutional Court or the Office of theOmbudsman. Its proposal to eliminate the municipal om-budsmen and the departmental accounting offices is partof a policy to reduce public spending and bureaucracy.These decisions have nothing to do with human rights.The functions assigned to municipal ombudsmen wouldbe assumed by the Inspector General, who is the maxi-mum authority for overseeing human rights, and theOffice of the Ombudsman would continue to performits duties. In other words, institutional safeguards forhuman rights would not be undermined.

The government’s decision to create a network of civilian informants and its proposalsto establish a part-time peasant army with 150 thousand members will not onlydrag the civilian population further into the conflict, but also threatens to reinforcethe presence of paramilitary groups in the country.

Amnesty International Report, 2003

False. These measures are designed to protect civil-ians and will not drag them into the conflict. The ci-vilian population is the primary victim of guerrilla and


paramilitary actions. Civilians make up the vast ma-jority of those kidnapped for ransom. The same istrue of the dead and wounded resulting from attackson villages and towns. Civilians also make up the twomillion people who have been displaced by guerrillaand paramilitary action. Illegal armed groups black-mail peasants, ranchers and merchants, and it is civil-ians who are forcibly recruited by guerrilla and self-defense organizations. The network of informants andthe peasant soldiers are intended to protect villagesand towns that were defenseless against guerrilla andparamilitary incursions up until only a short time ago,and to protect average citizens from kidnapping, acrime that once threatened everyone. These measuresare intended to halt the increase in paramilitary groups,which originated as an illegal way to protect the civil-ian population, which was left defenseless by weaklaw enforcement. The network of informants is noth-ing more than a presidential campaign to encouragecitizens to do their duty by reporting crime and thosewho violate the law. It is a call for the public to helpfight crime by denouncing criminals; no one will bearmed or encouraged to use violence. It invites law-abiding citizens to report crime and to demand thatjustice be served. This is how the rule of law, so weak-ened by vigilante justice, can be reestablished.

The networkof informantsis nothingmore than acampaign toencourage thecommunity todo its civic dutyby reportingcriminal activity.

Colombia leads the hemisphere in violations of human rights and internationalhumanitarian law. In 2003, the government claimed the decline in figures for the


Is it true thatthere arefrequent

violations ofHuman Rights

in Colombia?Yes, but notbecause of

its authorities.The armed

organizationsthey combat are

responsible forthe bulk

of humanrights violations

in Colombia.

worst types of political violence as a success. The decline is real, but a closer lookshows it was due to a number of factors, such as consolidation of paramilitarycontrol over certain regions. President Alvaro Uribe has failed to break the constantties between units of the country’s security forces and the paramilitaries. He alsohas failed to bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes against humanity and serioushuman rights violations. The guerrillas also commit serious violations, includingmassacres, selective killings and indiscriminate attacks. In 2003, the RevolutionaryArmed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) continued to kidnapcivilians, holding them hostage for financial or political gain.

Human Rights Watch World Report, January 2004

The country has been embroiled for years in an un-conventional war with three illegal armed organiza-tions that are not protected by the authorities, whocombat them, but by an intricate geography of moun-tains and jungle encompassing more than 400 thou-sand square kilometers of territory with no roads orany real government presence. The horrendous hu-man rights violations perpetrated by these organiza-tions would seem to afford Colombia the leadershipattributed to it by Human Rights Watch. However, inthe eyes of western political leaders and the media, astatement such as the foregoing, given without clari-fication, can be misinterpreted. It gives the impres-sion that Colombian authorities, not the organizationsthey combat, are responsible for most human rightsviolations in the country.


Authoritarianismis one thing,placing authorityat the service oflaw and publicsafety is another.

Álvaro Uribe Vélez took office as President of Colombia on August 7, 2002with widespread voting and an authoritarian platform.

Report by the International Federation for Human Rights and the WorldOrganization against Torture (WOAT).

This is a biased statement. Authority is one thing; au-thoritarianism is another. Álvaro Uribe Vélez waselected by an overwhelming majority of votes, havingoffered Colombians a policy for democratic securitythat in no way exceeds the bounds of the Colombianconstitution. It is a policy designed to place authorityat the service of the law and human rights, which havebeen threatened in many parts of the country, pre-cisely because of no real government presence. Thepeasants in remote regions of Colombia have been atthe mercy of guerrillas or paramilitaries. Both theseequally repressive and murderous forces have dis-placed more than two million people to the major cit-ies in search of protection. The security policy is anattempt to strengthen law enforcement in areas thatwere once unprotected. It also ensures the rule of lawand the exercise of State authority, as opposed to theauthority of illegal armed groups, be they leftist orrightwing. In Latin America, talk of “an authoritar-ian government” brings to mind unpleasant memo-ries of dictators, transgressions and abuse of power.This is not the case with the current democratic ad-ministration in Colombia, whose president has anapproval rating of more than 80%. This is somethingno leader has ever achieved.


The criminal prosecution of the perpetrators of human rights crimes deterioratedmarkedly as Attorney General (Prosecutor General) Luis Camilo Osorio, who tookoffice in mid-2001, undermined or derailed key cases. His hostility to human rightsinvestigations was evidenced, most notably, by his purge of prosecutors and investigatorswilling to pursue such cases.


Within days of taking office on July 31, 2001, Attorney General (ProsecutorGeneral) Osorio forced the resignations of the director and former director of thespecialized Human Rights Unit. Over the following months, he continued purgingthe office of officials who had worked on sensitive human rights cases and sent aclear message to those who remained that efforts to prosecute human rights violationscommitted by army officers would not be welcome. Over a dozen current and formerjustice officials described Osorio as having damaged morale among prosecutors andinvestigators and undermined the prospects of achieving justice in key cases.

A Wrong Turn: The Colombian Attorney General’s OfficeHuman Rights Watch World Report 2002

Not true. Prosecutor General Luis Camilo Osorio hasreinforced investigative activity during the current ad-ministration by creating 11 regional units with 100 of-ficials assigned exclusively to investigate human rightsviolations and serious infractions of internationalhumanitarian law. Compared with the former admin-istration, detentions are up by 16%.

Only four of the 41 prosecutors assigned to the Hu-man Rights Unit were relieved of their duties after


the Prosecutor General failed to find clarity in theiractions. Upon taking office, every Prosecutor Gen-eral has exercised the discretionary power as affordedby the State Council to appoint or remove subordi-nates. The four prosecutors dismissed by Osorio ac-count for only 9.7% of the entire staff of the HumanRights Unit. During the previous administration, 18%of the staff was dismissed.

Four other prosecutors did tender their resignationvoluntarily during the first year of Osorio’s term. Thisis not unusual, compared with the voluntary resigna-tions during the previous administration, which ac-counted for 36% of the entire staff. The figure speaksfor itself. The new prosecutors appointed to fill thesepositions had the necessary academic and professionalexperience to replace the prosecutors who resignedand those who were dismissed.

Whatever the Attorney General’s (Prosecutor General’s) intentions, the messagetransmitted through his office is, in the words of one prosecutor : “reduce the attentiongiven to cases involving paramilitary activity.”

A Wrong Turn: The Colombian Attorney General’s OfficeHuman Rights Watch World Report 2002

Not true. Contrary to these claims, the results achievedby Prosecutor General Osorio reflect an indiscrimi-nate fight against all who violate human rights, be they


members of illegal self-defense groups, subversives,military personnel, government agents or commoncriminals.

• Luis Camilo Osorio, Prosecutor General.

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Decisions against illegal self defense groups

Previous Prosecutor General (August 98 - July 31, 2001)

Indictments 258Plea Agreement 40

Current Prosecutor General (August 2001 - July 31, 2004)


Decisions against marxist guerrillas

Previous Prosecutor General (August 98 - July 31, 2001)


Current Prosecutor General (August 2001 - July 31, 2004)

Indictments 505Plea Agreement 17Source: Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Unit. Prosecutor General´s Office


As can be seen, under Luis Camilo Osorio, the Pro-secutor General’s Office has been 118% more activeindictments against paramilitaries and 508% moreactive against guerrillas.

The total number of indictments against each groupis similar.

No prosecutor general has been pressured to proceedor cease to proceed against a member of the military.Under no circumstance or investigation has the pro-secutor general ever conditioned the investigative ef-forts of his subordinates.

In response to these claims, Prosecutor GeneralOsorio said: “Human Rights Watch failed in its at-tempt to portray the truth of this administration. Onthe contrary, none of what it says reflects the facts.As Prosecutor General, I reject the reports of Hu-man Rights Watch, not only because they are riddledwith false, unfounded testimony, but also because theyoffer a subjective view that departs from the truth.”

Although the state of emergency is no longer in force, the security forces continueexercising de facto judicial police powers by undertaking joint operations with theOffice of the Attorney General (Prosecutor General). In these operations, agents ofthe Office of the Attorney General (Prosecutor General) have been called upon tosign on the spot arrest or search warrants which are based not on impartial judicialinvestigations, but on military suspicious often based on information provided by


paid military informants. On other occasions, arrests and searches have been carriedout without judicial warrants, despite the fact that those affected had not been inflagrante delicto. These arbitrary judicial practices, together with the possible grantingof judicial police powers to the armed forces, risks strengthening impunity and exposinghuman rights defenders and other civilians to arbitrary criminal investigations. Thesepractices risk tarnishing them as subversive and expose them to heightened risk ofviolent attack, regardless of whether or not these investigations uncover evidence ofcriminal wrongdoing. New amendments to the proposed legislation to grant the armedforces judicial police powers include the suspension of habeas corpus rights. Ifapproved, this suspension could facilitate acts of torture of those detained by thesecurity forces.

Amnesty International Report, November 2003

False. The country’s security forces have never exer-cised judicial police powers in joint operations withthe Office of the Prosecutor General. This is a con-tradictory claim. Investigations, arrest warrants andthe like are the responsibility of the ProsecutorGeneral’s Office and there is nothing abusive aboutoperations undertaken with the military to combat ter-rorism. This occurs in every democratic country andis in keeping with the law. The anti-terrorist legisla-tion approved recently by Congress is a separate mat-ter. It gives the armed forces judicial police powers,in special circumstances and with prior authorizationfrom the Prosecutor General, to detain suspects, in-terrogate witnesses, carry out raids or searches, andengage in wiretapping.


Anti-terroristlaws in Spain,France, Hollandand Ireland arefar more severethan the oneproposed byPresident Uribein Colombia.

The anti-terrorist statute has yet to take effect. In ahighly controversial decision, the Constitutional Courtdisallowed the statute alleging procedural errors in thelegislative process. In Colombia, many terrorist actsoccur in remote areas or jungle regions far from thepresence of judicial authorities. These are places wherethe population is exposed to a variety of abuses at thehands of illegal armed groups, be they FARC or ELNguerrillas, or peasant self-defense forces. It is impos-sible to compare this situation to circumstances inEurope or the United States, where there is no armedconflict of the proportions found in Colombia andwhere geography, communications, proximity to mu-nicipal areas and urban centers enable judges to actmore or less quickly. Anti-terrorist laws in countrieslike Spain, France, the Netherlands or Ireland are farmore severe than the one approved recently in Co-lombia. The human rights organization that made thisclaim has yet to speak out against measures that arecommonly accepted by the public in first world coun-tries. All of this appears to suggest a prejudice or biasthat prompts Amnesty International to condemn inColombia what is accepted and perfectly logical inother areas where terrorism is also a problem.

Under the government of President Uribe, human rights and social activists continueto be killed, “disappeared”, detained, threatened and harassed. Moreover, whileexpressing an interest in maintaining dialogue with non-governmental organizations


(NGOs), in practice, government security forces and other state officials are frequentlyand increasingly treating human-rights defenders and social activists as subversives,labeling them as such in public statements and targeting them during intelligenceand counter-insurgency operations. Numerous activists, trade unionists, journalistsand humanitarian workers have been interrogated or arbitrarily detained duringattempts to reach people in conflict zones cut off from the rest of he country. Duringraids carried out in so-called intelligence and counter-insurgency operations, indivi-dual personal details and information regarding the involvement of security-forcepersonnel in human rights violations has been seized from social organizations.These attacks against the human rights movement risk undermining its work byensuring that human rights violations committed by the security force and theirparamilitary allies can continue unobserved.


The foregoing is a completely arbitrary and biasedclaim. Saying that human rights and social activistscontinue to be killed, ‘disappeared’, detained, threatened andharassed under the Uribe administration is tantamountto blaming the government for acts often committedby organizations such as the AUC or paramilitarygroups. Presenting facts this way, without the neces-sary clarification, could give the impression that judges,journalists, congressmen, presidential candidates, may-ors, etc. have been eliminated or detained under thecurrent administration or any other. There have beenincidents of this type in Colombia, but they are thework of terrorist organizations like the FARC and theELN, not the authorities. Here again, there is no men-


Judges,journalists,members ofparliament, andsocial andhuman-rightsactivists havebeen victims ofhomicide andforceddisappearancein Colombia,but not at thehands of theauthorities. Itis terroristorganizations onthe far left andthe far right thatare responsiblefor these crimes.

tion of acts perpetrated in Colombia by Marxist ter-rorist organizations, even acts involving flagrant vio-lations of human rights. Instead, when human rightsviolations are committed by illegal armed groups onthe extreme left or right, they are deceptively attrib-uted to the government, even though law enforcementis doing all it can to combat these groups.

The opposite happens when militant organizationsused by the subversion because of their ideologicalorientation or connections are investigated by judicialauthorities and subject to searches, questioning oreventual detention of their members. This occurs inSpain with ETA sympathizers, in France with the sym-pathizers of Corsican terrorist organizations, and inIreland with undercover agents for the IRA. It alsooccurred in Italy with the Red Brigades and in Ger-many with the Baader Meinhof band. To conceal theiractivities, these individuals can pose as activists, so-cial or community workers, unionists or students,whether real or fictitious. This is an important pointto remember. The ideological affinities of so-calledhuman rights organizations whose executive reportstend to reserve most of the criticism for the Uribeadministration explain these distortions. This demandsa more cautious approach from the mass media, theleaders of political parties and members of congressand parliament in the United States and the EuropeanUnion, before giving unconditional credit to such re-ports.


There were reports that the Attorney General’s (Prosecutor General’s) Office wasseeking to block or hinder investigations into human rights violations in which seniormilitary officers were implicated. Prosecutors working on such cases were removedfrom the investigations or dismissed from their posts, while others faced death threats;at least one was killed. Several high-profile human rights investigations were alsodropped with no apparent justification.


Apparent, no doubt, for the authors of this statement,but not for the journalists, prosecutors and investiga-tors who uncovered serious irregularities on the partof officials who had managed to infiltrate institutionslike the Prosecutor General’s Office, as part of a care-ful strategy planned and implemented by subversivegroups. A lengthy investigation conducted over a pe-riod of four to five years by the Prosecutor General’sOffice, the Inspector General’s Office and the mili-tary system of criminal justice uncovered false wit-nesses, faceless witnesses who had been manipulated,trumped up proceedings, and the like. The casesagainst General Rito Alejo Del Río and GeneralFernando Millán Pérez are an example, as discussedin the following section. Manipulation of this sort ledthem to be branded as guilty of aiding and abettingillegal armed groups on the extreme right. They even-tually were exonerated of the charges announced toall and sundry by Human Rights Watch and AmnestyInternational. Both these organizations, which con-tinue to regard the dismissal of prosecutors as an


Severalwell-knownNGOs have yet toretract the falseaccusations theyleveled againstColombianofficers, even afterinvestigationsshowed theiraccusations wereunfounded.

abuse, violated one of the most important human rightunder the rule of law; that is, the presumption of in-nocence until proof of guilt. They have never openlyrectified their charges, which were shown to begroundless, but only after the damage was done. For-tunately, more scrupulous NGOs like Pax Christi givedue emphasis to the terrible human rights violationsperpetrated by Colombian terrorists, as opposed tospreading false accusations against those who fightthem.

• GeneralRito Alejo Del Río.

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THE CASE OFGENERAL DEL RÍO

According to A Wrong Turn: The Record of the Colom-bian Attorney General’s Office, which was published in2002 by Human Rights Watch, the new ProsecutorGeneral, Luis Camilo Osorio, began a purge within72 hours of his appointment by demanding the resigna-tions of two high-ranking, veteran officials who had handledsome of the institution’s most important and complex humanrights cases. A third official felt compelled to resign inresponse to the Prosecutor General’s actions. Accord-


ing to Human Rights Watch, the purge initiated afterOsorio asked the director of the Human Rights Unit,Pedro Díaz, and Deputy Attorney General Pablo ElíasGonzález to update him on one of the most impor-tant and controversial human rights cases investigatedby the unit. It involved alleged collaboration betweenthe head of the army’s Seventeenth Brigade, GeneralRito Alejo Del Río, and paramilitaries during the pe-riod from 1995 to 1997. Human Rights Watch pub-lished the following in this respect.

Following widespread and credible reports that General Del Río had ordered troopsto support the paramilitaries and was himself in contact with them, the HumanRights Unit opened a preliminary investigation in August 1998. Among the evidencecollected were testimonies from eyewitnesses, a local mayor, and three soldiers underDel Río’s command, including a former bodyguard and the general’s chief of staff,Colonel Carlos Alfonso Velásquez

The evidence against Del Río was compelling enough to prompt then-President An-drés Pastrana to cashier him in 1998. The U.S. government also canceled his visato the United States, reported on the grounds that there was credible evidenceimplicating him in “international terrorism” and drug trafficking.

In August 1998, the Human Rights Unit opened aninvestigation into General Del Río’s actions, collect-ing testimonies from supposed eyewitnesses, a localmayor, and three soldiers who claimed to have beenserving under Del Río. One of them claimed to be a

39T H E C A S E O F G E N E R A L D E L R Í O

General RitoAlejo Del Río, a

victim of falsetestimony, was

accused ofcollaborating

with paramilitarygroups.

Discharged fromthe army and

stripped of hisvisa to the United

States, he wasdeclared innocentfive years later by

the AttorneyGeneral’s Office,

the ProsecutorGeneral’s Office

and a militarycriminal court.

Guerrilla agentshad paid thewitness who

testified againstDel Río.

former bodyguard; another is Brigade Chief of StaffColonel Carlos Alfonso Velásquez. It is also true thatformer President Andrés Pastrana suspended GeneralDel Río in 1998 and that his visa to the United Stateswas cancelled on the grounds of supposed terroristactivities. In Urabá, where General Del Río had servedas Commander of the Seventeenth Brigade, thissparked protest among banana companies, the lead-ers of Sintrainagro (The Farm Workers Union), localpeasants and former EPL guerrillas who had rejoinedsociety as part of the Esperanza Paz y Libertad move-ment (Hope, Peace and Liberty) and had received pro-tection from the military. At a heavily attended cer-emony of redress held at the Tequendama Hotel inBogotá, Alvaro Uribe Vélez, who is now President ofColombia, and Fernando Londoño Hoyos, formerMinister of the Interior and Justice, spoke in GeneralDel Río’s defense. Both men emphasized the fact thatGeneral Del Río had pacified the region by putting anend to massacres perpetrated by the 5th, 18th, 34th and57th fronts of the FARC, mostly against banana work-ers.

What is the truth behind the accusations leveledagainst General Del Río by the Human Rights Unit?

The investigation into General Del Río’s actions inthe northwest banana region of Urabá began in res-ponse to statements made by Oswaldo de JesúsGiraldo Yépez, a soldier who claims to have served


with the Seventeen Brigade in 1996 as one of Del Río’sbodyguards. Giraldo claims to have seen the Generalinstruct his men to work in conjunction withparamilitaries and, therefore, to have acted as an ac-complice to the massacres committed by paramilitariesin Urabá. In his initial statements given under oath,Giraldo swore that Del Río supplied paramilitarieswith uniforms and weapons, so they could “offer alarge number of enemy casualties.”

Moisés Machado Córdoba, a soldier who claimed therewas a paramilitary camp located behind the XVII Bri-gade base, gave similar testimony. According to him,General Del Río let paramilitaries use the firing rangeat the base for training and supplied them with uni-forms, boots and other used material. He also claimedto have overheard a conversation in English betweenthe general and a foreigner “who offered support tofinish off the guerrillas.”

In an affidavit, Colonel Carlos Alfonso Velásquez, whowas the XVII Brigade Chief of Staff for six months,said there were indications that army personnel failedto move against self-defense groups (paramilitaries),more out of omission than action. Velásquez textuallystated: “General Rito Alejo Del Río seemed reluctantto fight them (the paramilitaries). He also claimed“there was a tendency towards an organizational cul-ture within the brigade that portrayed self-defense


forces as something along the lines of ‘my enemy’senemy is my friend’. This ethical misconception didnothing less than deprive the army of its legitimacy.”

Gloria Isabel Cuartas Montoya, a former mayor ofApartadó, the principal city in the region, supportedVelásquez’s statements. In testimony given under oath,she claimed to agree with Colonel Velásquez’s assess-ment of the military’s reluctance to engage self-de-fense forces in combat. Textually, she said: “Becauseof indirect information and rumors, I always felt andsuspected there were alliances with paramilitarygroups.”

Such serious accusations by military personnel underGeneral Del Río’s command and by a representativeof civil society (a former mayor of Apartadó) wereseized on immediately by local and international hu-man rights NGOs and conveyed to the United StatesEmbassy in Bogotá. This confronted the U.S. StateDepartment with an avalanche of coincidental accu-sations about General Del Río’s performance. Al-though they appeared to come from parallel investi-gations, these accusations stemmed from the samesource. At the time, the Human Rights Unit at theProsecutor General’s Office felt they were extremelydamaging to the General. Given the proliferation andmagnitude of the charges, the U.S. State Departmentinsisted the Pastrana administration retire General Del


Río from service and canceled his visa to the UnitedStates because of “terrorist activities”. PresidentAndrés Pastrana immediately met the U.S. demand,as a way to demonstrate that his government had ab-solutely no interest in having an officer in the armedforces who was suspected of cooperating with para-military groups.

These measures were taken against General Del Ríobefore either the Inspector General or the Prosecu-tor General had completed their investigations. TheInspector General’s Office was the first to announceits conclusions, following a scrupulous five-year in-vestigation that included over one hundred affidavits,depositions, free and spontaneous statements, docu-mentary proof, transferred evidence, and special vis-its to accumulate a vast store of proof. The followingwere the findings of the investigation:

The testimony given by soldier Oswaldo de JesúsGiraldo Yépez, in the sense that Del Río had specifi-cally instructed his men to operate in conjunction withparamilitaries, thus aiding their massacres, was discred-ited by General Norberto Adrada Córdoba, then-In-spector General of the Army, and by every other of-ficer assigned to the XVII Brigade (except ColonelCarlos Alfonso Velásquez). This accusation also wasdenied by the officers of the Francisco de Paula Vélez47th Infantry Battalion, the Voltígeros 46th Battalion


and the Cacique Coyará 11th Anti-guerrilla Battalion.These units are all part of the XVII Brigade. The of-ficers in question mentioned several orders issued byGeneral Rito Alejo del Río in which he outlined strictpolicies and ordered the troops under his commandto combat all perpetrators of violence, including theself-defense groups operating in Urabá. In short, theseaffidavits and the disciplinary investigations showedColonel Velásquez’s accusations were not true (pages17 to 23 of the case file).

During the course of the Inspector General’s investi-gation, a statement by security chief NCO JorgeQuintana revealed that Giraldo Yépez was never amember of General Del Río’s security force, nor hadhe been near the general. In contrast, a number ofGiraldo’s supervisors testified that he was an undisci-plined soldier who exhibited poor behavior. A reportattached to the case file and signed by an official fromthe Prosecutor General’s Office contains a summaryof Giraldo’s criminal activities, which eventuallylanded him in jail.

Given what was verified while evidence was beingcollected, including numerous statements that de-scribed Giraldo’s testimony as “untrue”, “unfounded”or full of “insidious lies”, he eventually retracted

all the statements he had made to officials from

the Attorney General’s Office and the Inspector


General’s Office. Giraldo also stated he had not beenpressured to retract his testimony.

“I retract everything and want nothing more todo with this. I do so freely and have not been pres-sured” (pages 40-41 of the case file).

What is serious about Giraldo’s original statement toofficials from the Prosecutor General’s Office is thathe lied when pressured by one of the prosecutors,Margarita Luna Prada, who worked with the HumanRights Unit. The directors of the Human Rights Unitwere accused on various occasions of political biastowards the subversion and irregularities in the waytheir investigations were conducted. These charges ledProsecutor General Luis Camilo Osorio to dismissthese individuals shortly after he took office.

Textually, Giraldo stated: I was in jail in Manizales whenMargarita Luna Prada flew in. They took me to theprosecutor’s office to talk with her and she promised me every-thing under the sun. She offered to send me to the United Stateswith my whole family if I said things against General RitoAlejo del Río and the military. Seeing as how I was in jail andconsidering her proposal, I based my statement on that andlied about General Rito Alejo del Río and the army”.

Giraldo also stated that a prosecutor from Medellínby the name of José Díaz confirmed the offer to send


him out of the country, with his family, if he signedstatements against General Del Río, statements thatwere already in writing. There were lots of pages I didn’tread and I really got enthused with what they said about meleaving the country.

According to Giraldo’s own words, his retraction(whether due to a guilty conscience or to the fact that hewas still in jail, with none of the promised benefits, wasnot well received by then-CTI officials at the AttorneyGeneral’s Office, nor by some people from the United Na-tions who wanted to know if I’d been bribed into retracting. I saidno and they told me that if I wanted (to annul my retraction), theywould send me to Holland or Sweden.

In its most recent conclusion, the Attorney General’sOffice stated that even if witness Giraldo Yépez had notretracted his statements, his initial incriminating testimony lendsno serious credibility to the charges that General Del Río wasinvolved with paramilitaries.

The Prosecutor General’s Office during that period,with Pedro J. Díaz as the head of the Human RightsUnit, was less than objective in its assessment of theaccusations and the evidence. Clearly, it was deter-mined to convict not only General Del Río, but otherhigh-ranking army officers as well. Diáz was eventu-ally dismissed when Prosecutor General Osorio dis-covered this and other serious irregularities in the work


of the people under his supervision. Interestingly,Margarita Luna Prada, the prosecutor who offeredGiraldo Yépez a number of attractive benefits, whilein jail, in exchange for false testimony against the gen-eral, was the same official who eventually issued thewarrant for General Del Río’s arrest. She now lives inCanada, having sought asylum to avoid being held li-able for what turned out to be malicious lies. At thetime, the Prosecutor General’s Office was, without adoubt, politically and ideologically biased. Between1996 and 2001, a number of its officials wereprompted to benefit the subversion by prosecutingsome of the military’s most outstanding officers fortheir efforts against the FARC and the ELN. Usingfalse testimony, it invariably tried to portray these of-ficers as the allies of paramilitary forces. Worse yet,international NGOs and even the U.S. Departmentof State gave credit to these accusations, without wait-ing for them to be investigated.

Once the principal accusations against General DelRío had been discredited by the accuser himself, whatremained were the incriminating statements by Colo-nel Carlos Alfonso Velásquez, former Apartadó mayorGloria Cuartas, and the solider Moisés MachadoCórdoba. The Prosecutor General’s Office concludedthat Machado Córdoba’s testimony lacked credibilityfor several reasons. First of all, it seems unlikely thata soldier who entered the army in November 1997could have gained the confidence of his command-


ing officers so quickly, particularly for access to thekind of incriminating information he claimed to pos-sess. No evidence of the military base purported tohave been located behind the Seventeenth Brigade wasever found. It also seems unlikely that MachadoCórdoba would have overheard a secret conversationin English between General Del Río and a foreignerwho was willing to provide the army with suspiciousaid against the guerrillas, particularly since neither thesoldier nor the General speak English.

As to the testimony of Colonel Velásquez and formermayor Gloria Cuartas, their claim of indications thatarmy units took no action against self-defense groupswere refuted, as mentioned earlier, by officers fromthe XVII Brigade and the Voltígeros, Francisco dePaula Vélez and Cacique Coyará battalions, who re-ferred unanimously to the official reports sent byGeneral Del Río in which he ordered his troops tocombat “everyone and anyone who commits violentacts, without exception”. These officers spoke of afalling out between Colonel Velásquez and GeneralDel Río, and Velásquez’s strange attitude towards thesubversion. For example, Colonel Alejandro NavasRamos, who was commander of the Voltígeros Bat-talion at the time, said that Colonel Velásquez “did notseem pleased with the operational results achieved against guer-rilla groups”. For his part, Colonel Pedro AlfonsoAvendaño testified at the Inspector General’s Officethat Velásquez “showed his disgust with the operational re-


sults against FARC guerrillas.” (pages 72 to 75 of the casefile).

General Del Río himself recalled that, when Velásquezwas in command of the Seventeenth Brigade, theFARC perpetrated a series of horrendous massacresagainst banana workers. The one at Osaka Farm is anexample. The victims were mostly workers who hadleft the guerrillas to join a legal political movementknown as Esperanza, Paz y Libertad (Hope, Peace andLiberty).

Regardless of whether Velásquez’s statements againsthis former commanding officer are interpreted ashostility or ill-will towards Del Río or a political biasthat prompted Velásquez’s complacency towards theFARC, the Inspector General’s Office had plenty oflegal reasons to discard his testimony, as it did withformer mayor Gloria Cuartas’s statements, which werepersonal considerations and judgements about themilitary’s purported reluctance to engage self-defensegroups in combat, but contained no conclusive evi-dence. “Everything she said about me,” said GeneralDel Río, when justifying the opinion expressed by theInspector General’s Office, “is supported by expres-sions such as I suspect, I believe or I felt. There is nobasis to her charges.”

Of course, in her travels abroad as a guest of NGOsthat share her position, Gloria Cuartas reiterates her


claims. For his part, General Del Río accuses her ofhaving maintained contact with the FARC’s FifthFront. This is according to statements by eleven FARCdeserters who testified under identity protection, butwere eventually discovered and killed.

All of this is controversial and has political under-tones. Yet, there is one undeniable fact: after a five-year investigation, the Inspector General’s Officefound no reason to try General Del Río and shelvedthe case.

Given the evidence that had been collected, the At-torney General decided not to detain the general andhas closed the investigation, after obtaining a nota-rized copy from the Inspector General of the entireprocess undertaken with respect to the general’s ac-tions and other evidence. Obviously, had the Inspec-tor General reached the same conclusion during thecourse of the investigation as the Prosecutor Gen-eral, the decision of the latter would be equally ac-quitting of the charges leveled against Del Río.

Portraying General Del Río as responsible for serioushuman rights violations or “terrorist activities”, with-out considering the facts, is negligence on the partof NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, AmnestyInternational, the International Federation for HumanRights (IFHR) and the World Organization againstTorture. It is also remiss of the U.S State Department.


Giving credit to accusations from two soldiers whowere obviously manipulated, or to the subjective opin-ions of a resentful subordinate, or a controversialmayor who operates on mere assumptions, withoutanalyzing the findings of investigations conducted inColombia, is not a defense of human rights, but aviolation. Every citizen, whether a civilian or a mem-ber of the military, is entitled to the presumption ofinnocence until the courts have ruled otherwise.

Then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for HumanRights, Labor and Democracy Harold Koh, who pres-sured the Colombian government in 1998 to dismissGeneral Del Río, was also on the Executive Board ofHuman Rights Watch, serving as a kind of “judge andparty” to the same action. This shows the bias withwhich the case was handled, in a classic violation ofthe right to procedural due process, which is a pillarof human rights, the rights violated by their defend-ers. What was done on the non-governmental side,Koh ratified from his official position.

• General FernandoMillán Pérez.

General FernandoMillán, who was

accused in reportsby the U.S.

Department ofState and Amnesty

International oforganizing

paramilitarygroups and

discharged fromthe army by

President AndrésPastrana, was also

a victim of falseaccusations. Three

separateinvestigations

exonerated himof all charges.However, his

accusers seem tobe convinced that

a Colombianofficer is guilty,even if proven

innocent.

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THE CASE OFGENERAL FERNANDOMILLÁN PÉREZ

In its 1998 report on human rights practices in Colom-bia, the U.S. Department of State said the following aboutRetired Brigadier General Millán Pérez:

In August the Prosecutor General for human rights opened a formal investigationof the army’s Fifth Brigade commander, Brigadier General Fernando Millán Perez,


to look into allegations that Millán armed and equipped a paramilitary group inLebrija, Santander department in 1997. The group was believed responsible for atleast 11 murders. However, on October 1 the Superior Judicial Council determinedthat Millán’s alleged actions constituted an “act of service,” and turned the caseover to the military judiciary for prosecution, effectively cutting off the prosecutor’sinvestigation. Millán had denied the charges.

Another section of the same report says: On October 1, the Superior JudicialCouncil determined that Brigadier General Fernando Millán Perez’s alleged organi-zation of a paramilitary group constituted an act of service and therefore turnedGeneral Millán’s case over to the military judiciary for prosecution (see Section 1.a.).In reaching its decision, the Superior Judicial Council determined that it was notbound by the Constitutional Court’s narrow 1997 interpretation of the 1991 consti-tutional standard in relation to acts of service. The Superior Judicial Council’s deci-sion effectively ended the Prosecutor General’s investigation into whether General Millánhad provided weapons and intelligence to paramilitary groups in Santander depart-ment.

However, on April 9, President Pastrana formally retired from service BrigadierGenerals Fernando Millán Perez and Rito Alejo del Rio; both had links toparamilitary groups. The Government stated only that it “was no longer convenient”for them to continue their military service. The military judiciary announced no newdevelopments during the year in its ongoing investigation of General Millán regardingallegations that he armed and equipped a paramilitary group in Lebrija, Santanderdepartment, in 1997. The group was believed responsible for at least 11 killings. In

The 1999 report by the U.S. State Department onhuman rights practices in Colombia says:

53T H E C A S E O F G E N E R A L F E R N A N D O M I L L Á N P É R E Z

October 1998, the Superior Judicial Council had determined that Millán’s allegedactions constituted an act of service and turned the case over to the military judiciaryfor prosecution, effectively cutting off the prosecutor’s investigation. Millán had deniedthe charges. In June the Attorney General’s (Inspector General’s) office opened adisciplinary investigation of Millán.

The State Department adds:

In October 1998, the Superior Judicial Council had determined that Millán’s allegedactions constituted an act of service and turned the case over to the military judiciaryfor prosecution, effectively cutting off the prosecutor’s investigation (See Section 1.a)In reaching its decision, the CSJ determined that it was not bound by theConstitutional Court’s narrow 1997 interpretation of the 1991 constitutional stan-dard of relation to acts of service. The CSJ’s decision effectively ended the ProsecutorGeneral’s investigation into whether General Millán had provided weapons andintelligence to paramilitary groups in Santander department.

In its 2000 report, the U.S. State Department reiter-ates the following:

In April 1999, President Pastrana formally retired from service Brigadier GeneralsFernando Millán Perez and Rito Alejo del Rio; both had links to paramilitarygroups. The Government stated only that it “was no longer convenient” for them tocontinue their military service. The military judiciary announced no new developmentsduring the year in its ongoing investigation of General Millán regarding allegationsthat he armed and equipped a paramilitary group in Lebrija, Santander department,in 1997. The group was believed responsible for at least 11 killings. In October


1998, the Superior Judicial Council had determined that Millán’s alleged actionsconstituted an act of service and turned the case over to the military judiciary forprosecution, effectively cutting off the prosecutor’s investigation. Millán had deniedthe charges. In June 1999, the Attorney General’s (Prosecutor General’s) officeopened a disciplinary investigation of Millán, which still was in progress at year’send.

Adding:

In August the Prosecutor General’s office opened an investigation against retiredBrigadier Generals Millán and Del Rio for bribing witnesses to testify falsely againsta leading NGO organizer and a labor leader. Human rights groups were subjectedto surveillance, harassing phone calls, graffiti campaigns, and threats by paramilitary,guerrilla, and other unidentified groups. At least four human rights activists hadbeen killed as of October ; there were three forced disappearances of human rightsactivists.

In its 1999 report on Colombia, Human Rights Watchstated:

Meanwhile, government investigators launched an investigation of the army officerswho set up and supported these associations without government approval. Forexample, the Las Colonias association in Lebrija, Santander was set up by GeneralFernando Millán at the Fifth Brigade base he commanded. The association regularlyextorted money from residents and allegedly carried out a series of killings, robberiesand death threats. Among its members before its dismantlement were several knownparamilitaries from the Middle Magdalena region. The army high command preventedprosecutors from questioning Millán, then interposed a jurisdictional dispute, claiming


that since Millán was in active service and carrying out his official duties, the caseshould be tried before a military tribunal. In October, the case, like hundreds beforeit, was sent to a military tribunal.

The government took some steps toward purging the military of suspected humanrights abusers. On April 9, President Pastrana cashiered General Rito Alejo delRío and Gen. Fernando Millán, who were both being prosecuted for alleged supportfor paramilitary groups. At this writing , the Attorney General’s (ProsecutorGeneral’s) office continued to pursue a case against Del Río for alleged support toparamilitaries who carried out dozens of massacres and selective killings in theMiddle Magdalena and Urabá regions. However, a similar case against Millánremained before a military tribunal. Given the long- standing practice of thesetribunals, the case was likely to end in impunity. The Attorney General’s (ProsecutorGeneral’s) Office and the Inspector General´s Office, which investigates allegationsagainst government employees, also found evidence implicating soldiers under Millán’sdirect command as well as police and DAS agents in a 1998 massacre inBarrancabermeja. The massacre had been carried out by paramilitaries who abductedand killed thirty-two people, apparently with the officers’ help.

THE TRUTH

General FERNANDO MILLÁN PÉREZ com-manded the Fifth Brigade in Bucaramanga from De-cember 1996 to December 1998. During that period,the Fifth Brigade was the army’s most effective unitin the fight against illegal armed organizations. Millán

In its 2000 report, Human Rights Watch stated:


managed to eliminate the region’s principal ELN lead-ers in combat. In Bucaramanga, he conducted an in-telligence operation that revealed ties between ELNsupport networks and a number of human rightsNGOs found to be channeling international funds tothe subversion, particularly from countries in theEuropean Union. For his efforts, the national gov-ernment awarded Millán the Distinguished ServiceMedal for Valor, Law and Order for the sixth time,and made him Director of the War College.

However, between 1997 and 1998, allegations thatGeneral Millán had organized and equipped a para-military group in Lebrija were accepted by the U.S.State Department and human rights NGOs such asHuman Rights Watch. This prompted PresidentAndrés Pastrana to order his dismissal from activeduty. The Prosecutor General and the Inspector Gen-eral opened an investigation into these allegations.Their inquiry lasted five years. In the end, the Pros-ecutor General’s Office, the Inspector General’s Of-fice and the system of military criminal justice ab-solved General Millán of all charges. Nevertheless,the U.S. State Department and Human Rights Watchhad already accused, tried and convicted him in theeyes of the international community, without givinghim a chance to prove his innocence.

What really happened? In December 1996, when Gen-eral Millán took command of the Fifth Brigade, which


has 120 thousand square kilometers of territory andapproximately 130 municipal districts under its juris-diction, he was confronted with a serious situation.Subversive groups and common criminals had initi-ated a wave of attacks, kidnappings, killings and ex-tortion in the region. Local poultry farmers, ranchersand residents turned to the military for help. Theseatrocities were having a serious impact on farming andlivestock in this important agroindustrial area.

Although 17 battalions were under orders from theFifth Brigade to protect the country’s oil facilities andthe highways to the Caribbean coast and Venezuela,many rural areas were at the mercy of FARC and ELNguerrillas. To address the situation, General Millánencouraged the creation of private security and sur-veillance services in more than 90 municipal districtsunder his jurisdiction. Commonly known as CON-VIVIR, these groups were entirely legal and were au-thorized by law during the administration of Presi-dent Ernesto Samper, and his interior minister HoracioSerpa Uribe. Essentially, they were designed to adviselaw enforcement of the presence and action of ir-regular groups in each municipal district.

At meetings in Bucaramanga and other towns in thearea under his jurisdiction, General Millán emphati-cally indicated these groups could have no ties withdrug traffickers and were not allowed to use army orpolice uniforms, or acquire arms reserved for use by


the military. “I’ll shoot anyone who crosses me on this,” hesaid at the largest of these meetings. This remark wastrumpeted in the regional press and on the radio. Theinstructions given to civic leaders who were part ofthe CONVIVIR in each municipal district were con-signed in minutes and documents.

The 90 CONVIVIR created at the time performedtheir functions, alerting law enforcement to the ac-tions and presence of subversive groups. There wasonly one exception: the CONVIVIR organized inLebrija, a busy agricultural town 17 kilometers fromBucaramanga, the capital of the department. AlthoughLuis Antonio Jaimes, a well-regarded poultry farmerwho was also president of the Community ActionBoard headed the group, two of its members beganto commit serious crimes and organized a typical para-military force, something Jaimes was unaware of.Retired army sergeant JOSÉ AGUSTÍN CAÑÓN andJESUS VELASCO, an informant for the RicaurteBattalion, imposed mandatory quotas and taxes onlocal inhabitants: farmers and merchants alike. Theyalso acquired weapons, performed law-enforcementduties in the smaller villages, and killed peasants theyregarded as guerrilla allies or informants. There arenumerous pieces of evidence and irrefutable testimo-nies to this fact.

The parish priest in Lebrija and the president of thelocal Convivir, Luis Jaimes, reported this situation to


the commander of the Antonio Ricaurte Battalion,Lieutenant Colonel Hernando Sánchez Salamanca. Atthe end of November 1997, Mr. Jaimes went to theFifth Brigade to inform General Millán that membersof the Lebrija Convivir were using their homes to hideweapons and were soliciting money from the civilianpopulation. General Millán immediately issued ver-bal and written instructions to the Los Güanes Bat-talion, ordering the detention of those suspected ofthese crimes. The operation ordered by General Millánwas carried out on December 4, 1997 under the codename Dragón. The leaders of the group fled when theyheard the battalion had arrived in Lebrija. This put anend to their crimes.

Nevertheless, the justice officials who investigated thecrimes committed by the paramilitaries in Lebrija de-cided that the commander of the Ricaurte Battalion,Lieutenant Colonel Hernando Sánchez Salamanca,failed to promptly detain or take action against thegroup, which claimed to be operating on behalf ofthe local Convivir.

The killings and other crimes perpetrated in 1997 bythe paramilitaries in Lebrija resulted in complaintsbeing filed with the Prosecutor General’s Office. Sur-prisingly, the Human Rights Unit of this agency de-cided to extend responsibility for these crimes to thehead of the Lebrija CONVIVIR - who was the firstto report them - and to General Fernando Millán Pérez


and Lieutenant Colonel Hernando Sánchez Salamanca,who were accused of having established and been partof vigilante groups, wrongly called paramilitaries ordeath squads. This accusation was enough for NGOsto announced these charges to all and sundry. With-out waiting for an investigation, the U.S. State De-partment demanded Millán’s immediate dismissal fromactive duty. President Pastrana complied with this re-quest.

Although General Millán took action against theparamilitaries in Lebrija as soon as he was informedof their crimes, why did the Prosecutor General’s Of-fice accuse him of involvement with the group he wastrying to combat? Now that he has been cleared ofthese allegations by three different instances in thejustice system, it is obvious that General Millán was avictim of injustice. His was a completely arbitrary situ-ation, considering there was absolutely no basis forinitiating an investigation. General Millán believes thefalse allegations that destroyed his career were thework of Cucuta Regional Prosecutor Ramses LibardoPinilla, who had jurisdiction over the area where theevents occurred. A military operation at Páramo deBerlín, a high plateau located between Bucaramangaand Pamplona, aroused General Millán’s suspicions.On that occasion, 15 ELN guerrillas were killed in abrief combat. The dead included Reinaldo Ardila andRafael Cabrera Lombana, commanders of the CapitánParmenio and Cácua Guerrero fronts. Among the


items found in Cabrera Lombana’s backpack were fivenotebooks. One of them, which contained a politicalanalysis and several recommendations, describesRamsés Libardo Pinilla as an excellent ally. A look atthe investigations carried out on Pinilla’s orders showsa trend towards high-ranking military officers beingaccused on the basis of dubious testimony.

At the time the Inspector General absolved GeneralFernando Millán of all charges in the indictment,Colonel Hernando Sánchez Salamanca, commanderof the Antonio Ricaurte Battalion, was dischargedfrom the army for negligence in responding to theallegations of paramilitary action in Lebrija and forhaving allowed his men to loan weapons to the groupcommanded by Sergeant Agustín Cañón, which waspreparing to fight the guerrillas. Police lieutenantÓscar Esteban Hernández Barragán was relieved ofhis duties for similar reasons.

In 1998, while the Inspector General’s Office, theProsecutor General’s Office and the military criminaljustice system were investigating the events in Lebrija,General Millán learned something very interestingabout his case. An individual by the name of LuisAlfonso Córdoba swore, in an affidavit, that AnaTeresa Bernal, Director of Redepaz (an NGO), andtwo individuals by the name of Hernando Hernándezand Jaime Caicedo, had offered him 1.5 million pesosand a chance to leave the country, if necessary, pro-


vided he accused Millán and General Rito Alejo DelRío of sponsoring vigilante groups (wrongly calledparamilitaries). Considering the seriousness of theaccusation against him, General Millán felt this wassomething the authorities should know about.

Córdoba filed his allegation on October 1, 1998 and adistrict prosecutor assigned to the Human Rights Unitat the Prosecutor General’s Office undertook the in-vestigation. Eventually, the Prosecutor General de-cided there was no basis for Córdoba’s claims andaccused him of making false accusations. A militaryintelligence agent by the name of Luis Arturo GarcíaLargo was also charged, as were Millán and Del Río.

The investigation into this new charge lasted morethan four years. In the end, the Prosecutor General’sOffice absolved General Millán and General Del Río,saying they had no way of knowing the accusationagainst Ana Teresa Bernal, Hernández and Caicedowas false. In his decision, Edgar Carvajal Paipa, theprosecutor assigned to the case, echoed the plea of inno-cence requested by generals Del Río and Millán, having foundno evidence whatsoever to warrant their prosecution.

Last but not least, the system of military criminal jus-tice concluded there was no reason to try BrigadierGeneral Fernando Millán Pérez in a military court oncharges of having instigated paramilitary groups.


In short, three parallel investigations found no rea-son to doubt Millán’s innocence. Nevertheless, in re-cent reports, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. StateDepartment still refer to him as an officer who “armedand equipped paramilitary groups in the Santander region ofColombia.” Neither of these institutions has mentionedthe clumsy plot staged against General Millán.

Instead of honoring the standard set forth in theUniversal Declaration and Pact on Civil and PoliticalRights, and in the American Convention, wherebyevery individual is presumed innocent until provenguilty, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. State De-partment seem to have adopted an opposite standardor, worse yet, one that considers a Colombian officerguilty until he is able to prove his innocence.

THE CASE OF CAPTAINGERMÁN PATAQUIVA

Since 1987, a paramilitary group has been operating in the Chucuri region ofSantander, between the towns of San Vicente and El Carmen. The same group,which patrols the area in the company of army troops, is responsible for the deathof 149 peasants between June 1987 and April 1990. Most of these crimes werecommitted during operations carried out in conjunction with the military. OfficerPataquiva has been identified repeatedly by local peasants as a prominent memberof this paramilitary group and the perpetrator of numerous crimes. The 7th, 21st

and 22nd criminal courts and those that deal with law and order have investigatedseveral of these crimes, and Officer Pataquiva was called to testify in 1992. TheAttorney General’s (Inspector General’s) Office initiated disciplinary action inresponse to these incidents and brought charges against Officer Pataquiva in November1992.

(Taken from the book El Terrorismo de Estado en Colombia(State Terrorism in Colombia),

Ediciones NCOS, 1992 – Vlasfabriekstraat 11 – 1060 BrusselsD/1992/2793/19)

This is true. Seventeen peasants from San Vicente delChucurí, the region mentioned in the report, accusedCaptain Germán Pataquiva of having murdered or“disappeared” a young peasant from the region, aftertorturing him, hanging him from a tree and burninghis feet. The 17 testimonies coincide in this accusa-tion. Charges were brought against Pataquiva by the


Prosecutor General and the Inspector General. Ontheir orders, he was detained at his assigned battalionduring the course of the investigation.

What the book omits is the truth revealed by the in-vestigation.

Instead of taking repressive action against the guer-rillas and their collaborators in San Vicente and ElCarmen de Chucurí, Captain Pataquiva tried to winthe support of local peasants by ordering his troopsto help repair roads, fences and houses. He told hismen the subversion was like a tree with many branches,only one of which was military. “If we cut off thatbranch, it might grow back, “ he said. “We have tofind the roots, which could lie with popular supportfor the guerrillas.” Through his contacts, CaptainPataquiva learned the peasants were unhappy aboutbeing forced to donate one day’s work a week to theELN, as part of so-called “production groups”. Lo-cal peasants also were obliged to attend ELN indoc-trination courses and, above all, their sons and daugh-ters were recruited by force. No one could protest,and many of these girls became pregnant.

After several months of trying to win the support ofthe local population, Pataquiva convinced two thou-sand peasants to go to a local ELN camp run by the“Captain Parmenio” Front. That day, their intentionwas to ask the commander to let them go about their

67T H E C A S E O F C A P T A I N G E R M Á N PA T A Q U I V A

lives, without having to fulfil a commitment to theguerrillas. The ELN’s response was brutal. The watersystem in El Carmen de Chucurí was dynamited,bridges on the roads between the town and the capi-tal of the department were blown up, and landmineswere planted in fields and stables. There are manywounded children and women in El Carmen.

The accusation by the 17 peasants was unfounded.The truth was something very different. Having con-ducted a survey to identify the poorest peasants inthe region, in order to provide them with a small sup-ply of groceries, Captain Pataquiva came across apoverty-stricken woman whose only son had beenrecruited by the ELN. He warned her of the seriousrisks her son faced by serving with the ELN. Disci-pline within that organization is severe at best. Fall-ing asleep while on guard duty or eating more thanthe authorized ration of food is enough to warrant adeath sentence. “When you hear from your boy, tellhim I could offer protection if he has a problem.”Pataquiva told to her. And, that is exactly what hap-pened.

In effect, the boy took advantage of his first oppor-tunity to be arrested by the military. He was taken toCaptain Pataquiva, who kept his promise by sendinghim to work with military intelligence in the city ofBucaramanga, as an informant. After Pataquiva hadbeen arrested, his sister came across the address and


telephone number of the boy he supposedly torturedand “disappeared”. Although the prosecutors sus-pected a set up, the former guerrilla went to their of-fices, identified himself, and admitted what had hap-pened. Pataquiva was released as a result, and laterfiled suit against the peasants who had wrongfullyaccused him. When questioned by prosecutors, theyadmitted the guerrillas had threatened them with deathif they did not sign a statement implicating Pataquiva.This is common practice and constitutes the ba-sis for many unfounded accusations leveled bywell-known NGOs. It goes without saying that Cap-tain Pataquiva withdrew his suit after learning the peas-ants had accused him under threat of death.

This is the truth not told in Terrorismo de Estado enColombia.

Well-known NGOs have emphasized the purportedresponsibility of the Colombian State for human rightsviolations. Yet, other non-governmental organizationsbelonging to a federation known as Verdad Colombiamaintain that very few members of law enforcementor the military are responsible for abuses of this type.For example, during the past year, the Ombudsman’sreport on human rights indicated that only 261 of the9,000 reported cases with a known perpetrator werethe work of state agents.

State agents implicated in human rights violationsacted on their own, never on behalf of the institu-tions with which they were associated at the time ofthe violation. This is a necessary clarification, inas-much as the international and domestic organizationsthat oversee human rights usually blame the Colom-bian State, as if systematic violation of human rightswere a state policy. In such cases, the saying “ inno-cent people must often pay for the guilty” simply can-not apply. Those responsible must be tried and con-victed.

HUMAN RIGHTS INCOLOMBIA: HOW RESPONSIBLEIS THE STATE?


In its report onColombia,AmnestyInternationaldoes notacknowledge theseriousness ofthe threat to thecountry posedby armedorganizationsthat growthousands ofhectares of coca,produce700 tonsof cocaine, andkidnap morethan 1,500civilians eachyear for millionsin revenue.

In the past year, judicial authorities in Colombia haveproceeded against several members of the armedforces for their involvement (through action or omis-sion) in specific human rights violations. An armycolonel was sentenced to 40 years in prison for themassacre at Mapiripán in the Department of Guaviare.An army major received a 28-year sentence for at-tempting to assassinate a union leader. Other officialsof different ranks are also involved in cases being in-vestigated and tried in ordinary courts. Some of themwill be exonerated and others will be convicted, butthey all have the right to due process.

Although opinion polls show 80% of Colombiansbelieve the measures adopted as part of PresidentUribe’s security policy are absolutely necessary, a num-ber of human rights organizations disagree. The Co-lombian government says the latest report by theUnited Nations High Commissioner for HumanRights underestimates what was accomplished in thisrespect during the past year.

THE UNITED NATIONS REPORT

According to the government, the United Nationsreport does not fully understand the Democratic Se-curity Policy, which is designed to protect each andevery Colombian. It questions the legitimacy and ob-jectives of the policy, masks its relevance for guar-

71H U M A N R I G H T S I N C O L O M B I A : H O W R E S P O N S I B L E I S T H E S T A T E ?

Colombiansociety is

polarized.Ninety-seven

percent of thepopulation

supports thecountry’s

democraticinstitutions. Only3% of the groups

on the far leftsupport the

guerrillas andtheir terrorist

tactics.

anteeing and protecting human rights, and occasion-ally gives the impression that it poses a threat to hu-man rights, as opposed to creating ways and means toguarantee the life and liberty of all Colombians. This,however, is contrary to the results of the policy andthe perception of those who live in Colombia.

The government says the UN report does not ac-knowledge the seriousness of the threat posed toColombia’s institutions and society by illegal armedorganizations that use terrorist tactics. Protecting andusing more than 100,000 hectares of land to growenough coca to produce 700 tons of cocaine, kidnap-ping more than 1,500 civilians during the year, dyna-miting 100 bridges, planting landmines, using explo-sive devices against the civilian population, killingmore than 13 mayors and 70 councilmen, and attack-ing infrastructure that is vital to the country - with483 electrical transmission towers and 62 communi-cation towers destroyed - were just some of the crimesperpetrated by terrorist groups in Colombia during2002.

Saying Colombia is a polarized society is simply nottrue. The vast majority of the population clearly sup-ports the country’s democratic institutions, opposesthe use of violence, and understands that the persis-tent violence inflicted by illegal armed groups affectsdemocracy as well as possibilities for social justice.


The following are some of the objectives of Presi-dent Uribe’s Democratic Security Policy:

Reinforce and guarantee a constitutional State throughout the nation by strengtheningdemocratic authority, free exercise of the authority of institutions, the rule of law,and the active participation of citizens in matters of common concern.

(Paragraph 4, Democratic Security Policy)

Security is understood as the protection of citizens and democracy by the State, withthe supportive cooperation and commitment of society as a whole, based on protectionof the rights of all citizens, regardless of gender, race, origin, language, religion orpolitical ideology; the protection of values, the plurality of political debate anddemocratic institutions; and the solidarity and cooperation of all citizens in thedefense of democratic values, expressed not only by exercise of the vote, but also byrespect for and encouragement to the civic values surrounding the plurality of politicaldebate, with society assuming an active role in public affairs, and in the defense ofthe freedom of all.


Action taken by the government shall always be within the bounds of the law.Human rights shall be observed rigorously and international humanitarian lawstrictly adhered to, as stipulated in the Constitution and by law. Any violation orabuse of human rights by a member of law enforcement or any other State agencyshall be punished without hesitation through disciplinary or criminal proceedings, asthe case may be.



The Colombian government says the Democratic Security Policy allowed for areduction of 33% in massacres during 2003, a decline of 57% in the number ofunionists assassinated, and 84% fewer attacks on villages and towns, whileguaranteeing control of the highways and all urban areas in the country.

The substantial decline in human rights violations inColombia is largely due to the impact of offensive op-erations mounted by the security forces against illegalarmed organizations. The police, who are now stationedin every municipal district, have strengthened the pres-ence of law enforcement throughout the country. Cre-ation of the High Mountain Battalions has been anotherfactor, as has the added volume and effectiveness of airpower and the development of sustained operations, allof which have weakened the terrorists.

Despite the claims of NGOs that are determined tofind a connection between the so-called paramilitariesand the armed forces, the number of self-defenseforce members who have been captured is up by 133%,while the number of FARC and ELN guerrillas cap-tured is up by 85%. There has also been an increasein combatants killed. This figure is up by 14% for theguerrillas and 85% for self-defense forces. These re-sults spell greater security for the population and theprotection of public property. As an example, attemptsto blow-up electrical power transmission towers aredown by 32%, and attacks on communications tow-ers, water and sewer system and bridges have declinedby 69%, 84% and 67%.


As to the 24 recommendations presented to the Co-lombian government by the United Nations HighCommissioner on Human Rights, the following areof particular interest.

6. The High Commissioner calls on the Department of Public Prosecution andsenior public service officials to take disciplinary action against any State employeeswho through their actions or omissions in any way jeopardize the work of humanrights defenders.

Ministry Order 09 of July 8, 2003 contains instructionson protection, support and dialogue with unionists andNGOs. Disciplinary measures will be taken when re-quired.

The Office of the Inspector General sent a letter to theOffice of the United Nations High Commissioner forHuman Rights on November 7, 2003 concerning theinformation that is available with respect to this require-ment.

Reported cases and accusations to this effect were re-viewed in conjunction with the Office of the InspectorGeneral.

12. The High Commissioner urges the security forces to fully observe the obligationsimposed upon them by international humanitarian law, especially those related to


observance of the principles of limitation, distinction, proportionality and the gene-ral protection of the civilian population.

All air operations must be approved the ColombianAir Force Command (FAC). As to protection, thepolice are now present in every municipality. Con-tinuous training and instruction are being offered inconjunction with the International Committee of theRed Cross (ICRC) to apply IHL principles in the plan-ning and execution of security operations.

According to the last annual report by the Ombuds-man, only 261 of the 9,000 reported cases of humanrights violations with a known perpetrator are attrib-uted to members of the security forces.

15. The High Commissioner calls upon the Government and Congress of theRepublic, when adopting policies or drafting legislation, to pay due attention to theobligations assumed by Colombia as a State party to international human rightsand international humanitarian instruments. He urges them to take account of theinternational principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, timeliness and non-discrimination when adopting or applying policies and measures related to securityand public order. He calls on them in particular not to introduce any rules in theColombian legal system that would enable members of the military forces to exercisepolice or other functions incompatible with the independence of the justice system.

The Colombian government has said it agrees withthe spirit of this recommendation, but not the inter-


pretation that judicial police functions for the mili-tary would, in and of themselves, violate internationaltreaties. It has indicated that measures to this effectmust coincide with the treaties signed by Colombiaand the needs imposed by actual conditions, whichhave been seriously affected by terrorist acts.

The government has asked Congress to approve aconstitutional amendment that would give thecountry’s institutions the tools they need to fight ter-rorism. One of these is the possibility of creatingspecial judicial police units, which would be comprisedof military personnel operating under the directionof the Prosecutor General’s Office. These units wouldperform judicial functions in high-conflict areas whereaccess is difficult. The following are some importantpoints in this respect:

• There are no judicial authorities in many remoteparts of the country where the rights of citizensare violated time and again by violent groups.

• This places serious constraints on investigative ac-tion by the State.

• Judicial authorities would assess the informationgathered by these units.

• They would be supervised and coordinated by theOffice of the Prosecutor General.

• Exercise of their faculties would be confined geo-graphically to areas where they are absolutely nec-essary.


• Their actions would be limited to combating te-rrorism and crimes against public safety.

• The members of these units would abide by a singleset of rules on liability and be removed from mili-tary jurisdiction

• This would be a temporary faculty (4 years).• Like all measures, these faculties would be subject

to judicial, disciplinary and political controls.• The impartiality of judges, the presumption of in-

nocence, the right to question evidence, the speedof a trial, the right to not incriminate oneself, andthe existence of appellate procedure or the prin-ciple of non bis in idem would not be affected.

• An accusation based on collected information orevidence would not constitute a definitive deter-mination of culpability.

• The members of these units would receive techni-cal training.

In short, this ruling is necessary given the current cir-cumstances in Colombia and is consistent with the in-ternational treaties of which the State is a party.

19. The High Commissioner calls on the Minister of Defense to suspend from dutywith immediate effect any members of the security forces involved in serious humanrights violations or war crimes, and to inform the judicial and investigative authoritiesaccordingly.

Decisions stemming from investigations by the Hu-man Rights Unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office


led to the suspension of 44 members of the nation’ssecurity forces in 2003 (25 from the army, 18 fromthe national police, and one from the marine infan-try). The Ministry of Defense will continue to honordecisions on suspension produced as part of a crimi-nal or disciplinary process.

20. The High Commissioner urges the Special Committee on the Conduct ofInvestigations into Human Rights Violations and Breaches of InternationalHumanitarian Law, chaired by the Vice President of the Republic, to work activelyon a selection of representative cases of such violations, and to submit a quarterlyreport to the President of the Republic, the Attorney General (Prosecutor General),the Procurator General (Inspector General) and the Ombudsman on the progress ofsuch investigations.

The Special Expediting Committee met on Decem-ber 4, 2002 to approve the Anti-Impunity Project tobe presented to the Government of the Kingdom ofthe Netherlands. A preliminary selection of 150 casesalso was approved on that occasion, as was the invita-tion to OACNUDH to become a permanent memberof the Special Expediting Committee and its workgroup. The agreement to initiate the Anti-ImpunityProject was signed in June 2003 between the govern-ments of Colombia and the Kingdom of the Nether-lands.

The work group of the Special Expediting Commit-tee approved a definitive slate of 115 serious human


In 2003,investigations by

the ProsecutorGeneral’s Office

led to thesuspension of

44 members ofstate security

forces. Thegovernment

does notencourage

human rightsviolations; it

condemns them.

rights cases on July 25, 2003. On October 2, 2003, atthe initiative of the Office of the High Commissionerfor Human Rights, it approved a selection of ten (10)priority cases to expedite and monitor.

During November and December 2003 eight (8) com-missions were ordered by the Inspector General andthe Prosecutor General to expedite the priority cases.Another eight (8) commissions were ordered up inJanuary and February. The number of commissionsordered by the Prosecutor General and the InspectorGeneral to address the selected cases, especially thoseconsidered a priority, is expected to triple.

The following are the results for November and De-cember 2003:

• 126 court ordered searches• 54 arrests• 54 investigations• 1 extended investigation• 36 statements• 14 interviews with informants• 45 judicial inspections• 6 exhumations• 12 identifications in a lineup• Confiscation of large quantities of military gear,

light and heavy weapons, ammunition, communi-cation and transport equipment, computer equip-


ment, documents, cash and psychotropic sub-stances.

• One (1) ruling by the Inspector General’s Officerequesting the dismissal of an army colonel forhaving taken part in the La Cabuya massacre. Theruling was subsequently confirmed by the Assis-tant Inspector General.

• Status of the individuals arrested: former and act-ing CTI officials, financial and operational com-manders of paramilitary groups, police officers,army officers and policemen.

The results for January and February 2004 include:

• 56 court ordered searches

• 25 arrests

• 25 investigations

• 4 interviews with informants

• Verifications

• Confiscation of large quantities of military gear,weapons, ammunition, communication equip-ment, videos and documents.

Status of the individuals arrested: a paramilitary groupcommander, paramilitary finance chiefs, hired gunmenand criminal masterminds.

A form to monitor the cases being expedited by theSpecial Committee was approved by the Project and


the Human Rights-IHL Unit on January 16, 2004.Management and performance indicators are beingdesigned for the Project.

21. The High Commissioner calls on the President of the Republic, in his capacityas Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the security forces, to take allnecessary steps to ensure that, independently of any dialogue conducted between thegovernment and paramilitary groups, all links between public officials and membersof such groups are severed. It also calls on him to inform the Procurator-General ofthe Nation and the Ombudsman about the implementation and results of suchmeasures in half-yearly reports

The Minister of Defense issued permanent DirectiveNo. 15 on September 23, 2003 outlining the policy oncombating illegal self-defense groups and impartinginstructions to the General Command of the ArmedForces and the National Police. Instruction No. 051was issued on October 8, 2003 to execute DirectiveNo. 15. In 2003, the number of paramilitaries whowere killed was up by 85% compared with 2002; ar-rests or captures were up by 133%. During the pe-riod from January 1 to February 23, 2004, 626 mem-bers of self-defense forces were captured and 105 werekilled.


According to theU.S. Embassy, theColombianCommission ofJurists definesdeaths ofcombatants inhostilities ashuman rightsviolations. TheU.S. Embassy alsosays that CINEPconverted 137detentions orderedby the authoritiesinto 398 humanrights violations.

THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY PERSPECTIVE

The following is from an internal memorandum cir-culated in 2003 by the United States Embassy in Co-lombia:

Some discrepancies between (Goverment of Colombia) GOCand NGO statistics can be explained by differing terminolo-gies and definitions. For example, GOC entities define amassacre as the intentional killing of four or more persons atthe same time and place, while NGOs define a massacre as thedeaths of three of more persons. The Colombian Com-mission of Jurists (CCJ), an internationally respected butunapologetically left-leaning NGO that regularly interpretsCINEP statistics, defines deaths of combatants in hostilitiesas human rights violations. Analysis of the CCJ’s own pub-lished statistics reveals that this definition more than doubledthe number of human right violations the CCJ recorded be-tween July 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003.

More broadly, the Jesuit-founded Center for Popu-lar Research and Education (CINEP), which man-ages Colombia’s largest and most influential databaseon human rights violations, defines “human rightsviolations” as crimes that can only be committed bythe state or state-sponsored actors, which it presumesto be paramilitaries. As a result, it attributes “humanrights violations” only to the government, and no re-port on human rights violations reflects that distinc-tion. The human rights crimes of guerrillas are cat-


egorized as violations of “international humanitarianlaw” or common crimes. The Colombian governmentuses a more common sense definition of human rightsviolations that encompasses crimes by illegal armedgroups, as well as state actors.

On the subject of arbitrary detentions, which increasedby 400 percent last year according to CINEP, theembassy report says CINEP…considers the following tobe “arbitrary”: legally-authorized arrests of demonstrators whoare occupying government property, arrests of, suspicious per-sons during urban combat operations, and warrant-based ar-rests of civic activists and union leaders suspected of support-ing guerrillas. Colombian human rights NGOs considerednearly all detentions carried out by military forces in the formerrehabilitation zones to be illegitimate, in spite of the fact thatsuch detentions were authorized by law and, unless outstand-ing arrest warrants were discovered, usually lasted a maxi-mum of 36 hours.

In some cases, CINEP also publishes numbers thatare already double-counted. For example, a CINEPreport for April through June, 2002, under the cat-egory “human rights violations based on political per-secution,” recorded 57 arbitrary detentions by theDepartment of Administrative Security (DAS), theColombian state and public forces, 60 by the Pros-ecutor General’s Corps of Technical Investigators(CTI), 86 by the national police and 85 by the JudicialPolice (SIJIN). An examination of specific cases re-


vealed that 57 violations (detentions) reportedly com-mitted separately by DAS, the Colombian State, pub-lic forces and the CTI referred to the same 57 deten-tions. Likewise, 85 “violations” reportedly commit-ted by the police and separately by SIJIN, a branch ofthe police itself, also referred to the same 85 deten-tions. Through double counting, 137 purported arbi-trary detentions became 398 violations in CINEP’spublished report.

The Embassy report contains a typical case in whicha violation was knowingly fabricated. For example, inpreparing the 2002 human rights report on Colombia, theEmbassy investigated a case widely circulated on the Internetthat accused Colombian soldiers of murdering an unarmed,mentally retarded man in a small Colombian village by nearlysevering his head with a machete. Based on the testimony ofcivilian investigators and witnesses, however, we eventually con-cluded that the victim was mentally sound, was armed with apistol at the time of his death, and was shot by a Colombiansoldier during a struggle.

CONCLUSION

All of the foregoing shows the statements and accu-sations voiced around the world by human rights or-ganizations, respected as they may be, are weak whenthe information does not come from field work con-ducted by these organizations, but is limited to claims


STATISTICS ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION

AND OPERATIONAL RESULTS ACHIEVED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT

COMPARISON BETWEEN 2002 AND 2003

2002 2003 Change in percentage

Homicides 28.837 23.013 -20%Murdered Union Activists 121 52 -57%Murdered Mayors 13 9 -31%Murdered City Councilmen 80 75 -6%Murdered Indians 180 164 -9%Murdered Teachers 79 41 -48%Massacre Victims 680 423 -37%Massacre Cases 115 77 -33%

by local NGOs whose ideological bias offers littlechance of objectivity. In Colombia, the issue of hu-man rights has obviously been manipulated to deprivethe government of support, in its fight against ter-rorism, from the United States and the countries ofthe European Union, which face the same danger.

The threat to human rights in Colombia comes froma weak State, not from a build-up in the State or exer-cise of its democratic authority throughout the coun-try, as some NGOs have tried to maintain. Proof ofthis can be found in the results of President Uribe’sDemocratic Security Policy during the past year.


Murdered Journalists 10 7 -43%Kidnappings 2.986 2.200 -26%Attacks on Population Centers 32 5 -84%Attacks on Communication Towers 62 19 -69%Attacks on Power-transmissionTowers 483 326 -32%Attacks on Oil Pipelines 74 179 141%Attacks on Bridges 100 33 -67%Attacks on Water Systems 12 3 -84%Members of self-defensegroups killed by security forces 187 346 85%Members of self-defensegroups captured 1.356 3.166 133%Subversives killed bysecurity forces 1.690 1.919 14%Subversives captured bysecurity forces 3.763 6.967 85%

HOW IMPARTIAL ARE HUMANRIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS?

A look at the Colombian situation shows some areand some are not. The ones that are, such as PaxChristi, take the trouble to conduct their own investi-gations in Colombia. Consequently, they are in a bet-ter position to determine who is really responsible forhuman rights violations. In contrast, internationalNGOs are unreliable when their information comesfrom local NGOs whose ideology is linked to Marx-ist-Leninist thinking or the theology of liberation. Thisbias prompts them to classify the FARC and the ELNas insurgent, rebel or armed opposition groups andto overlook their typically terrorist activities. Theyprefer to train their sights exclusively on members ofthe military, blaming them for violations perpetratedby right-wing terrorist organizations such as theUnited Self-defense Forces of Colombia.

NGOs are national and international in nature. Thisis an important point to remember. An NGO is inter-national if its membership is multinational. However,its actions are subject to the laws of the country whereit was chartered. In other words, it is an organizationconstituted under national law, but can exert interna-tional interference, depending on its by-laws. For ex-


ample, three individuals of different nationalities couldestablish an international NGO with interests thatwould be above the national interests of any State.

International NGOs are, therefore, atypical organiza-tions with a strange ideological and financial mix.They frequently receive information from “front” (orfacade) organizations, which is not always analyzedand verified in a strict sense. A disturbing fact in theColombian case is that these informants are part of astrategy defined by the subversion as a “combinationof all forms of struggle.” Although concealed, theiraction is militant. Their accusations are designed togive a false impression of human rights violations, inthe hope of neutralizing State action against guerrillaorganizations whose ideology and objectives theyshare. When conveyed to international NGOs, theseaccusations are circulated widely outside Colombia,where honest European and U.S. journalists and po-litical leaders usually credit them as being true.

Unfortunately, governments, parliaments and multi-lateral organizations are vulnerable to pressure frombiased NGOs and do not bother to find out whoruns them, who their members are, or where theirfunding comes from. No one verifies or controls theinformation they circulate. No one asks them forproof, much less court verdicts. If, by chance, theirallegations do not coincide with the investigationsor acquittals, they accuse the country and its judicial

89H O W I M PA R T I A L A R E H U M A N R I G H T S O R G A N I Z A T I O N S ?

system of complicity with the purported violatorsof human rights. They are unappealable judges whoignore a fundamental right: the presumption of in-nocence to which everyone is entitled until foundguilty in a legal proceeding.

Even though the Colombian army is subject, like noother, to civilian authority and bears no similarity tothe military forces seen under the dictatorships inChile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and other countriesof the continent, which were responsible for horren-dous human right violations, many of its officers havebeen the target of confirmed malicious lies circulatedby biased NGOs.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, WOLA(the Washington Office on Latin America), Pax Christi,WOAT (the World Organization against Torture),FEDEFAN (the Latin American Federation of Asso-ciations of Families of the Disappeared) andSERPAJAL (Latin American Service, Peace and Jus-tice) are the more well known international NGOs.They all follow the same standard with respect to theiraccusations. José Miguel Vivanco of Human RightsWatch and Michael Shifter of Inter-American Dia-logue are on the Board of the Washington Office onLatin America. Both are prominent leftists who givecredit to Colombian NGOs that have close ties withthe Communist Party or are inspired by the theologyof liberation. The biased impact is double, since


WOLA members, acting on behalf of these special-ized organizations, advise U.S. State Department of-ficials and some members of the U.S. Congress onmatters related to Colombia.

For more impact and credibility, the strategy used byWOLA, Amnesty International and Human RightsWatch is to publish joint reports. Mrs. AlmudenaMazarrasa, the first delegate of the United NationsHigh Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia,said the following in this respect.

“I am tired of the NGOs that did nothing but criticize my efforts and my opinions.They invariably sought to condemn the actions of the armed forces and the government,as if the State was the only violator of human rights. They lobbied in Geneva forharsh statements from me. I have never felt the AUC are directly associated withthe armed forces or exist as part of State policy.”

El Espectador, Colombia, 1999

To remove any shadow of doubt about the partialityof certain NGOs and their impact on U.S. govern-ment decisions with respect to Colombia, eminent WallStreet Journal columnist María Anastasia O’Gradywrote:

“By focusing on Colombia’s armed forces and not the guerrillas they are combating,United States policy is far from neutral. The guerrillas are quite content to turn out


as many ‘credible pleas’ as the courts will accept. Involved as it is, the United Statesexpends no time, money or political will to determine which of these pleas are actually‘credible’. With just one full-time employee in the Human Rights Office at theUnited States Embassy in Bogotá, the State Department depends largely on whatNGOs have to say. And, although many of these non-governmental organizationshave openly said they support guerrilla policy and have shown a tendency to recycleaccusations that are flawed or already refuted, the United States has not questionedtheir veracity.”

Wall Street Journal Americas, September 2001

For his part, the renowned French thinker JeanFrançois Revel recently stated:

“The rights of man are universal or nonexistent. Invoking them in one case andsilencing them in another proves they are being ridiculed and used as political weaponsin pursuit of objectives alien to them”.

There is a strange lack of forcefulness in the pressreleases and reports of these NGOs when talkingabout the actions of leftist terrorist groups. For ex-ample, their position was not faultfinding in May 2002when 119 people, mostly women and children, wherekilled in Bojayá, Chocó by gas cylinder bombslaunched by the FARC.

The author of Esquilando al Lobo (Shearing the Wolf)and Colombia, otra Muerte Anunciada (Colombia: An-


• Destroyed church in Bojayáwhere 119 people, includingwomen and children were killedby a FARC bomb attack(explosives packed in propanegas canisters).

• This woman lost everythingin the FARC attack

on Bojayá. Phot

ogra

ph: F

ile.

other Death Foretold), Retired General Adolfo Clavijo,said the following about Amnesty International, Hu-man Rights Watch and the Washington Office on LatinAmerica (WOLA) in the first of these books:


AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

The organization dates back to 1961 when PeterBenenson, a London lawyer, launched a campaign,“Appeal for Amnesty 1961,” in the London Observer tohelp political prisoners. In 1991, it was consolidatedas Amnesty International (AI), which proclaimed it-self as a world organization independent of any po-litical party, ideology, economic interest or religiouscreed. In practice, it does not comply with these prin-ciples. Prisoners are the focus of AI activities, but theorganization intervenes in the developing countrieswith reports - sometimes fair and sometimes tenden-tious - about real or alleged violations of human rightson the part of State agents. Amnesty Internationalacts on the basis of the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights and international agreements. It hasmore than 700,000 members, subscribers and sympa-thizers in over 150 countries and territories and morethan 3,800 work groups on prisoners on the five con-tinents. It maintains a working relationship with theUnited Nations, UNESCO, the European Council, theOrganization of American States (OAS), and the Or-ganization of African Unity. Its operations and ac-tivities are financed through subscriptions and dona-tions from AI members around the world.

With respect to Colombia, Amnesty Internationalpublishes an annual report that invariably favors thesubversive process. This is accomplished in two ways:


by questioning anything to do with security institu-tions and by subtly or openly shielding the politicaland armed subversion in Colombia. In 1994, AmnestyInternational reinforced its annual report on Colom-bia with paid propaganda in Europe’s leading news-papers on purported violations of human rights bythe Colombian government. The report that year wasone of the most scathing for the country and the fur-thest from the truth. Apart from its annual reports,the organization also launches harsh attacks againstColombia in the Spanish edition of EDAI (EditorialAmnistía Internacional), which is an AI publication.

Amnesty International does not limit itself to reports.It also has proven to be one of the most persistentNGOs in demanding that certain countries and inter-national organizations impose sanctions on Colom-bia. In conjunction with other NGOs, it has insistedthe United Nations Commission on Human Rightsappoint a rapporteur for Colombia. This would beconsidered a sanction against the country. Further-more, through its branch in the United States(AIUSA), Amnesty International has demanded theUnited States “halt all military aid to Colombia untilthe dubious actions of over a dozen army brigadeshave been clarified.”(El Tiempo, December 15/96, page 9-A)

Amnesty International is disinclined to receive com-plaints from victims of guerrilla violence and is un-


willing to condemn the criminal actions of guerrillagroups.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH-AMERICAS

Formerly known as Americas Watch, this organiza-tion is based in Washington D.C. and was founded in1981 to promote and monitor observance of interna-tionally recognized rights. Its role is to publicize theproblems that exist in countries, particularly with re-spect to violations of human rights. In practice, itsupports leftist groups and conducts campaigns todiscredit certain governments and their armed forces.

Human Rights Watch-America publishes an annualreport on the situation of human rights in Colombia.This document usually departs from actual conditionsand demonstrates a proximity to the struggle beingwaged in Colombia by left-wing extremist organiza-tions. Like Amnesty International, it tries to turninternational organizations and the United States gov-ernment against the Colombian government, due tohuman rights violations it claims are committed bythe army and paramilitary groups. It has been moreinsistent than any other organization in maintainingthat the paramilitaries are part of the Colombian armyand, therefore, act in conjunction with the militaryagainst the “political opposition” and against “armedopposition groups”. As demonstrated earlier, it gives


Are human-rightsorganizationsimpartial? Someare and some arenot. It is time theUnited States andEurope stopregardingeverything theysay as the GospelTruth.

special consideration to guerrillas, justifies their ac-tions and, like Amnesty International, rejects com-plaints against the subversion.

Human Rights Watch does not have an office oragency in Colombia, which is why it never substanti-ates or determines the veracity of the accusations itpublishes from enemies of the State. This is also thereason for the considerable amount of informationthat is unfounded or does not adhere to the facts.Human Rights Watch fails to acknowledge what thegovernment has accomplished in the field of humanrights, nor does it accept any decline in violations per-petrated by State agents. When there are no new epi-sodes, it insists on returning to cases that have beenreported and tried, or its version of facts already dis-credited by judicial authorities in Colombia.

WASHINGTON OFFICEON LATIN AMERICA (WOLA)

WOLA monitors the practices, political developmentand policies of the United States in Latin Americaand the Caribbean, and provides information andanalysis on the region to U.S. policy makers and thegeneral public. It is funded by contributions from pri-vate foundations, religious organizations and indi-vidual donors. In practice, WOLA concentrates onhuman rights violations perpetrated by State agents,


taking a position that favors the subversive intentionsof the far left.

Federación Verdad Colombia, a group of more than20 non-governmental organizations, has published andcirculated this report to reinstate the truth about hu-man rights in Colombia, which constitute a highly sen-sitive issue. This effort is in response to a particularconcern. In recent years, disinformation has been theprimary political weapon of terrorist groups and theirallies. It is part of the strategy they define as a “com-bination of all forms of struggle”. One of these, per-haps the most effective on the international scene, isto manipulate statistics and reports in a way that con-ceals their responsibility for horrendous crimes inColombia and indicts the State, and particularly themilitary, for purported violations of human rights.This is usually effective, since the First World and es-pecially Europe know little about actual conditions inColombia. Honest journalists, political leaders, par-liamentarians, humanitarian organizations and evengovernments are deceived. Yet, after so much distortedand unfounded information about the situation inColombia, finally they have the right and opportunityto learn the truth.

A SENTENCE ISSUED BY THEINTER-AMERICAN COURTOF HUMAN RIGHTS(ARGUMENTS QUESTIONING IT)

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, basedin San José de Costa Rica, condemned the Colombiannation for the death of 19 merchants who were assas-sinated in Magdalena Medio during 1987. Based onevidence presented during the trial, the Court ruledthe paramilitary group responsible for the murdershad close ties with senior government security offic-ers stationed nearby, who provided them with sup-port and collaboration. The verdict was unanimousand Colombia was ordered to pay 16,600,000,000 pe-sos (6.5 million dollars) in damages, without benefitof appeal, and to hold a public ceremony with thefamilies of the victims to admit its responsibility andextend an apology. The nation also was ordered toerect a monument and install a plaque with the vic-tims’ names, to protect the witnesses who testified atthe trial and their families, and to deposit damagesawarded to minors in an investment bank, in dollars,within a period of one year.


Prominent Colombian legal experts have contested thesentence with the following arguments:

1. A legal provision dated December 24, 1965 did allowself-defense groups to be formed with members of thecivilian population “for use by the government in ac-tivities and tasks intended to help restore the situationto normal”. The basis for this provision was the lim-ited presence of security forces in certain parts of thecountry, coupled with guerrilla incursions, threats andextortion against the peasant population.

2. Under this provision, the Ministry of National Defensecould “authorize private use of weapons reserved ex-clusively for the Armed Forces, when deemed neces-sary.”

3. However, in 1985, the government began to detect theexistence of illegal armed groups alongside the self-defense forces. These illegal groups were involved in“criminal acts, massacres and killings”. This obliged thegovernment to outlaw all self-defense organizations in1989 and to pursue them as it does opposite groups,such as the FARC and the ELN. So, in no way can theiractions, such as the massacre of those 19 merchants,be attributed to the government.

4. Those who planned and carried out the massacre aremembers of illegal groups, not government security

A S E N T E N C E I S S U E D B Y T H E I N T E R - A M E R I C A N C O U R T O F H U M A N R I G H T S 101

forces. Several have been identified, arrested and con-victed. Two paramilitary leaders, Henry Pérez and hisfather Gonzalo, who were killed in 1991, were identi-fied as having helped to plan the massacre. Henry Pérez’swife was arrested. Six of those who actually did thekilling were convicted and imprisoned. MarcelianoPanesso Ocampo, Waldo Patiño Garcia, Nelson LesmesLeguizamon and Alfonso Baquero Agudelo, aliasVladimir, were convicted of homicide, and CarlosAlberto Yepes Londoño and Diego Viafara Salinas wereconvicted as accomplices to the crime.

5. In Colombia, like anywhere else in the world, the gov-ernment cannot be held responsible for illegal use of aweapon for which the owner has a license granted bythe authorities.

6. If a legal precedent of this sort were to be established,the nation would be obliged to respond for any and alldamage inflicted by institutions or individuals who areauthorized to perform certain activities. This includescrimes or irregularities committed by private securityguards, surgeons, lawyers, drivers or any other individuallicensed to carry a weapon.

7. The officers and noncommissioned men who were ac-cused by several NGOs of having instigated the mas-sacre of those 19 merchants were acquitted when theinvestigation showed they were performing duties in


other regions at the time of the crime, and wereassigned to other units. General Farouk Yanine Díazis a case in point. He had been the head of theMilitary Academy for a year and had no troopsunder his command. The Military Academy is lo-cated 400 kilometers from the scene of the crime.The verdict in criminal proceedings was confirmedon appeal and was not reversed.

8. It is difficult to understand how the nation can beheld liable for this massacre. The legal frameworkafforded to self-defense groups in 1965 was notextended to the so-called paramilitary groupstwenty years later, and it was never proven that theweapons used in the killings had been supplied bythe armed forces, either at the time or years earlier.

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