Breaking the Grip? Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia Copyright © 2008 Human Rights Watch All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 1-56432-385-4 Cover design by Rafael Jimenez Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA Tel: +1 212 290 4700, Fax: +1 212 736 1300 [email protected] Poststraße 4-5 10178 Berlin, Germany Tel: +49 30 2593 06-10, Fax: +49 30 2593 0629 [email protected] Avenue des Gaulois, 7 1040 Brussels, Belgium Tel: + 32 (2) 732 2009, Fax: + 32 (2) 732 0471 [email protected] 64-66 Rue de Lausanne 1202 Geneva, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 738 0481, Fax: +41 22 738 1791 [email protected] 2-12 Pentonville Road, 2nd Floor London N1 9HF, UK Tel: +44 20 7713 1995, Fax: +44 20 7713 1800 [email protected] 27 Rue de Lisbonne 75008 Paris, France Tel: +33 (1)43 59 55 35, Fax: +33 (1) 43 59 55 22 [email protected] 1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 500 Washington, DC 20009 USA Tel: +1 202 612 4321, Fax: +1 202 612 4333 [email protected] Web Site Address: http://www.hrw.org October 2008 1-56432-385-4 Breaking the Grip? Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia Map of Colombia ...................................................................................................... 1 Glossary...................................................................................................................2 I. Summary and Recommendations ..........................................................................3 II. Background: Paramilitaries, Impunity, and the Justice and Peace Law................20 III. Changes to the Justice and Peace Law...............................................................24 Constitutional Court Ruling ...............................................................................24 Executive Decrees.............................................................................................28 IV. Confessions under the Justice and Peace Law....................................................30 Problems in the Taking of Confessions .............................................................. 31 Flawed Lists of Applicants ........................................................................... 31 Insufficient Resources .................................................................................33 Most Applicants Have Withdrawn from the Process......................................34 Types of Abuses Confessed...............................................................................36 Paramilitaries’ Statements about Accomplices..................................................39 Statements Implicating Members of the Security Forces...............................40 Statements Implicating Politicians...............................................................44 Statements Implicating Businesses and Economic Backers .........................46 Unanswered Questions.....................................................................................48 The La Rochela Massacre.............................................................................49 The Mapiripán Massacre..............................................................................52 The El Aro Massacre..................................................................................... 55 The El Salado Massacre.............................................................................. 60 The Chengue Massacre................................................................................63 Extraditions of Paramilitary Leaders ................................................................. 66 The Government’s Failure to Ensure Paramilitaries Fulfill their Commitments .................................................................................................................. 68 The Impact of Extraditions on Truth and Accountability in Colombia.............82 What the US Department of Justice Could Do ...............................................84 V. The Parapolitics Investigations ..........................................................................87 Background on Supreme Court Investigations .................................................. 88 The Role of the Attorney General’s Office...........................................................91 Status of Prominent Cases...........................................................................92 Initial Progress in Cases Related to Jorge 40’s Computer ............................. 99 Delays and Cases of Concern in the Attorney General’s Office ....................100 Uribe Administration Response....................................................................... 110 Proposal to let the “Parapoliticians” Out of Prison ......................................111 Attacks on the Supreme Court ................................................................... 112 Failure to Adequately Reform Congress...................................................... 122 Judicial Reform Proposal............................................................................ 124 VI. International Legal Standards......................................................................... 127 Victims’ Rights to Truth, Justice, and Non-Repetition of Abuses ....................... 127 The Right to Justice .................................................................................... 127 The Right to Truth ...................................................................................... 130 Potential for Involvement of the International Criminal Court ............................131 Acknowledgments................................................................................................136 Map of Colombia 1 Human Rights Watch October 2008 Glossary AUC: Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a coalition of most paramilitary groups in Colombia. CTI: Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación, Technical Investigation Body, an entity attached to the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia and charged with providing investigative and forensic support to the office in criminal cases. DAS: Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, the national intelligence service, which answers directly to the president of Colombia. ELN: Ejército de Liberación Nacional, National Liberation Army, a left-wing guerrilla group. FARC: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia’s largest left-wing guerrilla group. High Commissioner for Peace of Colombia: Alto Comisionado para la Paz, an official advisor to the president of Colombia on peace initiatives. The high commissioner often represents the president in peace negotiations with armed groups. Office of the Attorney General of Colombia: Fiscalía General de la Nación, a Colombian state entity charged with conducting most criminal investigations and prosecutions. The Office of the Attorney General is formally independent of the executive branch of the government. Office of the Inspector General of Colombia: Procuraduría General de la Nación, a Colombian state entity charged with representing the interests of citizens before the rest of the state. The office conducts most disciplinary investigations of public officials and monitors criminal investigations and prosecutions, as well as other state agencies’ actions. Breaking the Grip? 2 I. Summary and Recommendations In Colombia, more than in almost any other country in the Western hemisphere, violence has corroded and subverted democracy. Too often, killings and threats—not free elections or democratic dialogue—are what has determined who holds power, wealth, and influence in the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between paramilitary groups and important sectors of the political system, the military, and the economic elite. Paramilitary groups have ravaged much of Colombia for two decades. Purporting to fight the equally brutal guerrillas of the left, they have massacred, tortured, forcibly "disappeared", and sadistically killed countless men, women, and children. Wherever they have gone, they have eliminated anyone who opposed them, including thousands of trade unionists, human rights defenders, community leaders, judges, and ordinary civilians. To their enormous profit, they have forced hundreds of thousands of small landowners, peasants, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous persons to flee their families’ productive lands. The paramilitaries and their supporters have often taken the abandoned lands, leaving the surviving victims to live in squalor on city fringes, and leaving Colombia second only to Sudan as the country with the most internally displaced people in the world. With their growing clout aided by drug-trafficking, extortion, and other criminal activities, paramilitaries have made mafia-style alliances with powerful landowners and businessmen in their areas of operation; military units, which have often looked the other way or worked with them; and state officials, including numerous members of the Colombian Congress, who have secured their posts through paramilitaries’ ability to corrupt and intimidate. Through these alliances, paramilitaries and their cronies have acquired massive wealth and political influence, subverting democracy and the rule of law. But Colombia now has before it a rare opportunity to uncover and break the influence of these networks by holding paramilitaries and their accomplices 3 Human Rights Watch October 2008 accountable. In the last two years, paramilitary commanders have started