In a long-awaited development, Colombia’s transitional justice court, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), has issued its first sentences for crimes committed during the armed conflict. Created in the 2016 peace agreement, the JEP aims to bring justice to victims and ensure non-repetition through a process of truth and reconciliation that prioritises the rights of victims. In return for testimonies, it grants reduced sentences if the accused cooperate with investigations, admit responsibility and express remorse. As the agreement lays out, this is critical to a sustainable peace process.
The sentences relate to two of the JEP’s 11 main investigations, known as macrocasos. In the first case, on 16 September, the court sentenced seven former leaders of the FARC guerrilla movement to eight years of reparations for hostage taking. The seven former members of the FARC secretariat – who as senior guerrilla commanders were deemed ultimately responsible, rather than as having directly taken hostages – are Rodrigo Londoño, Pablo Catatumbo, Pastor Alape, Joaquín Gómez, Jaime Alberto Parra, Carlos Antonio Lozada and Rodrigo Granda. In total, 41 former FARC members have entered the JEP to stand trial over hostage taking.
The restorative sentences oblige those sanctioned to undertake community service, activities and other forms of reparations such as the search for victims of disappearance, removal of landmines, environmental protection and construction of memory. Full details of these projects have not yet been announced. There are also geographical restrictions that limit where those sentenced can travel within the country.
In one of the conflict’s most notorious practices, commonly known as ‘False Positives’, Case Three examines thousands of extrajudicial killings by the army in which victims were presented as guerrillas killed in combat. The JEP sentenced 12 officers and soldiers in the Popa Battalion to between five and eight years of restorative justice for the murders or forced disappearances of 135 civilians in Colombia’s Caribbean region from 2002 to 2005.
The JEP has previously found that, on a national level, the army committed at least 6,402 False Positive murders between 2002 and 2008, under the hard-right government of Álvaro Uribe. In total, 163 military officials, including 17 generals, have entered the JEP accused of participating in killings. While the JEP provides reduced sentences for those who admit their guilt, those accused who deny responsibility but are found guilty face longer prison sentences in the standard justice system. Three senior officials, including retired colonel Publio Hernán Mejía, have denied any involvement in False Positives.
The sentenced officials are Guillermo Gutiérrez Riveros, Heber Hernán Gómez Naranjo, Efraín Andrade Perea, Manuel Valentín Padilla Espitia, Carlos Andrés Lora Cabrales, Eduart Gustavo Álvarez Mejía, José de Jesús Rueda Quintero, Élkin Leonardo Burgos Suárez, Élkin Rojas, Juan Carlos Soto Sepúlveda, Yeris Andrés Gómez Coronel and Alex José Mercado Sierra. Nine of them had previously served prison time over False Positive killings, and as such received shorter JEP sentences, with the exception of Gutiérrez Riveros, Padilla Espitia and Álvarez Mejía, who will serve the full eight years of restorative actions. Unlike the former FARC leaders found responsible in Case One, the convicted military officials directly carried out the crimes for which they have been sentenced.
‘No Colombian should have died as a result of a criminal network behind selecting, murdering and disappearing innocent people, taking away children, mothers, fathers, sisters, partners, friends and communities with the sole purpose of turning them into numbers, into cold and flawed statistics,’ said the JEP’s president, Judge Alejandro Ramelli.
The decision is important because it again highlights how the Popa Batallion colluded with paramilitary groups to select victims. Others were lured from elsewhere in the country with fake job offers. The victims included 131 men and four women, with the majority aged between 18 and 34. Five victims were under the age of 18. At least six were of African-Colombian heritage and 14 of ethnic indigenous Kankuamo or Wiwa heritage. Many victims were informally employed, earning low incomes as agricultural workers, in local transport or recycling, thereby making them vulnerable to fake job offers that presented economic opportunities. One unidentified woman was held for 24 hours and forced to cook for the Battalion before being killed. Some male victims were beaten and interrogated prior to their execution.
The guilty soldiers will be required to carry out restorative sentences. The first confirmed project will see them participate in the development of a mausoleum to commemorate 700 victims in the Caribbean region. They will also be unable to leave the city of Valledupar, where the Battalion was based.
The United Nations welcomed the issuing of the JEP sentences as a milestone for Colombia’s peace process. A spokesperson for Secretary General Antonio Guterres said they ‘mark a key step forward for the innovative mechanisms of transitional justice in the Agreement, which seek to foster truth, ensure accountability for the most serious crimes committed during Colombia’s armed conflict, as well as to provide redress to victims.’
Other cases under investigation by the JEP include the extermination campaign against the left-wing Patriotic Union party that saw the army and paramilitaries murder over 5,700 party members and supporters, collusion between state agents and paramilitary groups and the impact of violence on populations in the regions of Urabá, Nariño and Cauca/Valle del Cauca.
The sentences come as a welcome boost for the JEP, which has faced a series of obstacles since it began functioning. In 2019, the government of Iván Duque unilaterally attempted to weaken its jurisdiction, while earlier this year the Donald Trump administration in the US cut funding to the court. Further conclusions in other cases are expected soon.