RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Demanding Justice for the Justice System Itself

By Constanza Vieira Reprint | | Print |

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Sep 30 2005 (IPS) - In an amends ceremony held in Colombia’s Foreign Ministry, Vice President Francisco Santos apologised, on behalf of the Colombian state, to the families of 12 judicial officers killed in 1989 by paramilitaries in complicity with members of the army, and to three survivors of the massacre.

The ceremony was held in compliance with recommendations handed down by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which called on the Colombian state to admit its responsibility for the killings of the judges, court officials and forensic technicians.

But Alexandra María Beltrán, the daughter of one of the victims, Judge Pablo Antonio Beltrán, said no forgiveness is possible until the entire truth about what happened on that tragic day has been clearly established.

Although several of the perpetrators, including soldiers collaborating with the paramilitaries, were tried and imprisoned for the killings, others received light sentences, and those who ordered the massacre were never brought to justice.

The murders occurred in January 1989 in La Rochela, a rural area in the northeastern province of Santander.

The 12 victims and three survivors were members of a judicial commission that was investigating an earlier massacre of 19 merchants by paramilitaries accompanied by members of the security forces, in October 1987 (for which the Colombian state was ultimately held responsible by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights).

The judicial commission was met by a group of paramilitaries posing as members of the main leftist rebel group involved in Colombia’s four-decade civil war, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

According to an IACHR document, the supposed guerrillas offered to help the commission clarify the 1987 massacre, and said they would take the judicial officers to the crime scene.

But the commander of the paramilitary group posing as guerrillas, Adolfo de Jesús Baquero, alias “Vladimir”, was actually one of the leaders of the paramilitary group responsible for the massacre of the 19 merchants.

Under the argument that they might run into members of the army who could “endanger their lives or seek to thwart the investigation”, Vladimir persuaded the judicial commission to take part in “a simulation that consisted of allowing themselves to be secured as though they were being held by the guerrillas”, the IACHR reported.

“In this way, the armed men bound the victims by the feet and hands and placed them in the victims’ own vehicles. Once they were defenceless and under the control of the armed group, the victims were taken to the location known as ‘La Laguna’, where they were shot, then killed with a gunshot wound to the head.”

The vehicles were then painted with slogans to make it look like the killings were the work of FARC.

Three of the victims miraculously survived by pretending they were dead.

Dressed in black like the rest of the relatives of the victims of the La Rochela massacre, Judge Beltrán’s daughter calmly read out a statement in the Foreign Ministry Wednesday, in the name of the families and the three survivors.

Among the listeners were Vice President Santos, Foreign Minister Carolina Barco, Defence Minister Camilo Ospina, Attorney General Mario Iguarán and the chief justices of Colombia’s high courts.

In her speech, Beltrán pointed out that Vladimir had close ties with the military commanders in the region, and said “there is abundant evidence that the murderers were working in coordination with the military battalion in the region and had connections with a nearby base, where Colonel Rodrigo Rojas paid them, periodically and in person, for their activities.”

“It cannot be said that those responsible for this crime were isolated, stray elements of the army,” she declared.

“Behind this crime lay systematic practices by agents of the state deeply implicated in the exercise of terrorism by the state, which created, supported and fomented the paramilitary organisations that have brought endless pain and extreme desolation to thousands of homes,” she said, adding that the “genocidal” plans are designed in “army brigades and battalions.”

Beltrán stated that “it cannot be said that the state’s responsibility merely lies in omission of its duties and obligations to provide protection. Haven’t the paramilitaries enjoyed complete legal, political and economic support from the state since their very creation?”

In the case of her father and his colleagues, the state “did not hesitate to eliminate its own functionaries, because it considered them a threat to its policies of impunity,” said Beltrán.

Vladimir, one of those who was convicted and imprisoned in connection with the killings, had provided details of how the massacre was planned, organised and carried out, describing the motives and giving the names of those who ordered the murders.

The aim, he said, was not only to keep the judicial commission from carrying out the investigation, but to seize the documents and files its members were carrying.

The evidence and testimony showed that the “sicarios” or hired killers had a strategic alliance with drug traffickers, and that the commanders of the second army division directly supported and gave instructions to the paramilitary group, through five generals, six colonels, a major and a lieutenant who Beltrán specifically mentioned by name in her statement.

Regional Santander legislator Tiberio Villarreal was also mentioned in Vladimir’s testimony, as one of the organisers of a paramilitary group.

Villarreal collected monetary “donations” from local businesses in Bucaramanga, the capital of Santander, for the group of sicarios led by Vladimir. In exchange, the paramilitaries scared up votes for the lawmaker, according to Vladimir.

“It was also clearly demonstrated that ACDEGAM (a local cattle ranchers’ association) provided invaluable support to the killers, informing them of the route that the judicial commission would take and notifying them that the investigators were carrying their files with them,” said Beltrán.

Commanders of police stations in the region were also implicated in the massacre.

In addition, said Beltrán, “massacres and executions have been planned in the military training schools where courses are given by foreign mercenaries like” Yair Klein from Israel and former British soldiers.

The investigation of a general, a colonel, a major and a lieutenant was transferred to the military courts, and nothing was ever done to fully identify the officers implicated in the murders, even though their last names and rank were already known. In fact, several of them were promoted. Nor was any action ever taken against ACDEGAM.

Lawmaker Villarreal, meanwhile, benefited by “hasty” action by the Supreme Court, which let him off the hook, Beltrán noted.

She also pointed out that “this ceremony of amends would not have been possible if the case had not been taken to international bodies of justice.”

But “After 16 years, we are only at the start of the investigation,” human rights lawyer Eduardo Carreño told IPS.

Carreño is a member of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, the highly respected human rights group that brought the case before the IACHR, in order to get it moving again.

The Colombian state has only agreed to indemnification for some of the families of the victims.

The ceremony in which the state issued an apology was just one of the recommendations handed down by the IACHR, which also referred to the need to establish the truth about the massacre, investigate all of the intellectual and material authors, hold an impartial trial, and provide full reparations for the victims.

If Colombia fails to live up to the recommendations, the case will be referred to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.