Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: Paramilitary Disarmament Law – Guaranteeing ‘Justice’ or Impunity?

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Jun 23 2005 (IPS) - "I have no idea, I don’t know anything about that," Colombian President Alvaro Uribe responded when asked by journalists if he had covered up for his brother in a criminal investigation into the creation of a paramilitary group.

Lawmaker Gustavo Petro told Congress this week that "in a lawsuit in the past, the president’s brother was accused of sponsoring and creating paramilitary groups."

Just a few days earlier, Petro, a former guerrilla fighter with the 19 de Abril Movement, which became a political party in 1990 and now forms part of the left-wing Independent Democratic Pole, had also revealed that politicians in the northern province of Sucre had set up a death squad.

But he was now referring to the president’s brother, Santiago Uribe, a landowner who was investigated during a legal prosecution of crimes perpetrated by right-wing paramilitaries.

The stockbreeder was accused of organising a group known as the 12 Apostles, which was reportedly based on his "La Carolina" estate, located in the northwestern province of Antioquia.

The 12 Apostles have been accused of killing a total of 50 people. One case against them, in which a complaint has been filed before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, involved June 1990 killings in the village of Campamento, in Antioquia, in which four bodies were found and two people went missing.

The "La Carolina" estate housed the paramilitary group’s "radio, which was operated by Mr. Santiago Uribe," said Petro, whose party (the Independent Democratic Pole) governs Bogotá, the capital.

Lawyer Daniel Prado, who represents the families of three of the Campamento victims, told IPS that the Inter-American Commission must determine whether the state has stood in the way of an investigation into the Campamento killings.

Petro said President Uribe should "explain to the entire country what happened to the legal case against his brother, which directly linked him to the paramilitaries and crimes against humanity."

The legislator commented to IPS that "I am protesting that Uribe, who knows that his direct family members have been accused of involvement with the paramilitaries, has dared to sponsor a law that grants the paramilitaries impunity."

Petro referred to the case against Santiago Uribe on Tuesday in the Chamber of Deputies, during a heated session that culminated in the passage of the "law on justice and peace", which sets the rules for the disarmament of the paramilitary militias, who are engaged in negotiations with the Uribe administration.

When the vote on the new law was held, the representatives of all of the parties with the exception of those that back Uribe left the floor. But the factions that support the right-wing president form a majority in Congress and were able to enact the controversial bill, which grants the paramilitaries generous benefits.

Attorney-General Luis Camilo Osorio confirmed late Tuesday that the president’s brother had been the focus of an investigation in 1999. But he said there were orders for the case to be definitively closed that year.

Nevertheless, Osorio said his office would verify "whether Petro has new information or evidence on the question" to be put at the disposal of the Attorney-General’s Office.

After his curt initial remarks, President Uribe phoned the attorney-general and asked him to "clarify" his brother’s current situation.

After more than a year of discussions, which to one degree or another involved more than 30 countries as well as the United Nations, the "bill on justice and peace" was finally approved by Congress and was sent to the president Wednesday to be signed into law.

The new law will govern the demobilisation of the paramilitary militias grouped since 1994 under the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) umbrella.

According to United Nations agencies, the paramilitaries are responsible for the lion’s share of the atrocities committed in Colombia’s long-running civil war.

After the law goes into effect, 20 prosecutors will have just 60 days to carry out "in-depth" investigations into the crimes and human rights violations committed by the more than 10,000 paramilitary fighters set to demobilise by the end of the year, according to the timetable set up in negotiations with the government.

As a condition for providing financial assistance for the disarmament process, the United Nations and the international donors that are cooperating with Colombia – the European Union, the United States, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, as well as multilateral lending institutions – had required passage of a law that would lay the groundwork for the disbanding of the groups, in line with international legal standards.

Since July 2004, the Uribe administration has been negotiating with AUC, several of whose leaders are accused of being drug kingpins.

In the meantime, the government has maintained a military offensive and a continuing verbal battle against the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and to a lesser extent, the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).

During the congressional session in which the new law was passed, a confrontation occurred between two Uribe supporters, Deputy Gina Parody and the government’s High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo.

Parody, who spoke out to defend the government from Petro’s accusation, said that "if the president supported the paramilitaries, I would leave ‘Uribismo’," the faction that backs the president.

She then attempted to summarise her criticism of the "law on justice and peace", but was booed down by more than 100 of her fellow Uribe supporters, who demanded that she leave the floor.

Along with her went the members of the opposition Liberal Party. Outside, Parody said 70 percent of the country’s legislators are "friends" of the paramilitaries, and not only 35 percent as two AUC leaders have boasted.

Parody was one of the authors of an alternative bill on "truth, justice and reparations" to govern the paramilitary disarmament process. As she recalled before she was expelled from Congress, the bill was torpedoed by Restrepo himself after it was already being secretly negotiated with AUC.

The initiative had been agreed on by opposing factions in Congress, and according to Parody also had the green light from President Uribe.

The much tougher bill co-authored by Parody included measures that, according to its proponents, would have led to the effective dismantling of the paramilitary structures, like a requirement for a complete confession of crimes by the fighters, who would otherwise risk losing their benefits.

Restrepo angrily rejected Parody’s criticism, and accused of her allying herself with Uribe’s detractors and of "smearing the image of the peace commissioner" by insinuating that he acted behind the president’s back against the alternative bill.

In defence of the "law on justice and peace" that was passed Tuesday, he said the paramilitaries will only be eligible for benefits like reduced jail time after they have confessed their crimes and cooperated with the prosecutors, and once the victims have been granted reparations.

According to the peace commissioner, if a paramilitary fighter who has handed in his weapons tries to cover up his crimes, "he can be taken to the ordinary courts and will feel the full rigour of the law."

Critics also say the law is weak due to the lack of a political consensus. "This should have been a law of national unity," said Senator Rafael Pardo, a former defence minister.

Senator Jimmy Chamorro, who belongs to a Christian movement and often backs the government, said the law benefits drug traffickers "who were involved in that business for years but have overnight taken on the trappings of great paramilitary leaders."

A number of traffickers facing drug charges in the United States and possible extradition have reportedly joined AUC’s negotiations with the government, in order to benefit from the disarmament agreement.

But pro-Uribe lawmaker Armando Benedetti, who worked with Restrepo in drawing up the bill, said that under the new law, "those who have merely dabbled in the drug trade will be eligible for the benefits, while true drug traffickers who try to disguise themselves as paramilitary leaders" will not be able to take advantage of the agreement.

According to Chamorro, however, the new law "defies international humanitarian law, defies truth, justice and reparations, and is actually a law of impunity and immunity."

Local analysts say it will be impossible to find out the truth about who was ultimately responsible for the killings and massacres of tens of thousands of Colombians and the forced displacement of as many as three million.

These human rights crimes began to occur on a massive scale and became systematic after the paramilitaries appeared on the scene in the early 1980s.

But the director of the local office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael Frühling, stated unequivocally in a press conference last week that "without truth, there can be no justice and reparations, or peace and reconciliation."

The Colombian Commission of Jurists, a human rights group that holds consultative status at the United Nations, issued a series of brief statements starting on Jun. 14 in which it minutely examines the "law on justice and peace" under the title "Impunity Law".