Grouped in the Strategic Litigation Space, human rights organizations have reported on the alleged responsibility of high-ranking military leaders and public officials in the practice of extrajudicial executions in Colombia.
The document, “They Knew, Did They Give the Order?: From Violation of Discrimination to Barbarism,” covers acts of this kind committed between 2006 and 2008.
A week ago, JEP began confession hearings, where the accused most responsible in this type of incident appeared before the Confession, Victims, State Institutions and Colombian society where they recounted how they had committed the criminal acts.
While presenting the report this morning at the University of Santo Tomas, the seat of Bogotá, Pilar Castillo, a lawyer from the Minga Association, noted that in Case No. 3, the JEP should also prosecute those military parties that appear, due to jurisdiction. To investigate them, they were not summoned by the ordinary judiciary.
In this sense, they have formally asked the Peace Court to summon ex-President Alvaro Uribe, ex-president and former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, as well as eight former officials and retired generals, for false positives.
The document also shows that there was a criminal plan before the period under study and explains that by that time (2006-2008) it had been expanded to include all divisions of the national army, often accompanied by hate speech.
“Through this report, we provide the AKP with material evidence that would allow it to warn that the high command of the national army and military forces, as well as high-ranking officials such as the President and his deputy, had early knowledge of what was happening and they did not something to prevent it.”
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace is expected to take into account that the prosecution and punishment of those responsible for extrajudicial executions constitutes an international obligation of the state, which obligates its judicial bodies, the report states.
Strategic Litigation Space organizations have warned that failure to comply with this obligation translates into impunity on the part of those who do not comply with it.
“False Positives” is the name given to a case that mainly involves members of the national army killing noncombatant civilians, who are considered combative victims of the internal armed conflict.
JEP confirmed in a February 2021 report that the total number of casualties was 6,402 between 2002 and 2008.
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