Colombia’s transitional justice court, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), has charged six former soldiers, two former police officers and a former security executive for state oil company Ecopetrol with war crimes over alleged collusion with paramilitaries in the city of Barrancabermeja, which is the centre of Colombia’s oil industry, between 1998 and 2000. During a period of intensive paramilitary activity, the country’s largest such group, the United Self-Defence Forces (AUC), violently targeted activists, trade unionists and other civilians. The charge is yet further evidence of the broad-ranging collaboration between state forces and paramilitary groups during Colombia’s armed conflict.
The men are accused as part of the JEP’s broader investigation into collaboration between state agents, paramilitary groups and other third parties to carry out severe abuses including massacres, targeted assassinations, forced displacement, torture and threats. According to the court, those accused focused on the concept of a ‘common enemy’ that was applied to civilians as well as members of guerrilla groups.
The charged military officials are José Domingo García, Óscar Sánchez Vélez, Juvenal Brugés Palmera, Carlos Avendaño Ávila, Oswaldo Prada Escobar and Jesús Herrera García. The two police agents are Juan Carlos Celis and Nilson Durán, while José Eduardo González was responsible for security at Ecopetrol’s oil refinery. At least three men face accusations of homicide. Three other military officials, Héctor Peña Porras, Fernando Millán Pérez and Alberto Bravo Silva, were previously charged with allowing paramilitary violence to take place despite having the capacity to prevent it.
The JEP has identified 431 people killed and 85 disappeared killed by paramilitaries in Barrancabermeja between 8 January 1998 and 29 December 2000. Among the organisations targeted were the USO oil workers’ union, which saw members killed or forcibly disappeared, and the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS). Trade unionists were targeted specifically for their labour organising.
The JEP investigation alleges that, on 16 May 1998, USO’s president reported threats of an attack to Millán Pérez, a commander in the army’s Fifth Brigade, who did not act on the warning. Armed paramilitaries subsequently killed seven people and abducted 25, many of whom were tortured, murdered and disappeared. Another one of the accused, Avendaño Ávila, facilitated the AUC atrocity by preventing vehicles from entering the vicinity.
Among other JEP investigations are the FARC guerrillas’ taking of hostages, and the army’s systematic murder of over 7,000 civilian who were presented as guerrillas killed in combat, with the vast majority of cases occurring in 2002-08 under Álvaro Uribe’s hard-right government. Uribe’s Democratic Centre party is a vociferous opponent of the JEP and has argued for military officials to be excluded from its jurisdiction or for it to be closed. Several former FARC leaders and military officials have admitted responsibility for the crimes and, under the terms of the 2016 peace agreement, received ‘restorative’ sentences that offer reduced sentences in return for truth and acceptance of guilt.
The recent election of Abelardo de la Espriella has put further pressure on the court, as he strongly criticised its functions during his election campaign. However, Colombian opposition parties, the United Nations and foreign governments, including Britain, have called for its autonomy to be respected so it can complete its mandate and bring justice to the many victims of Colombia’s armed conflict.