10 former FARC members accused of 14 war crimes

The Special Competence for Peace (SPE) charged ten former members of two fronts of the defunct FARC with 14 war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, displacement and recruitment of minors, committed in southwestern Colombia.

These are the first accusations of this body of transitional justice in case 05, which investigates the territorial situation of northern Cauca and southern Valle del Cauca, and concerns ten members – among them women – who were part of the mobile columns of Jacob Arenas and Gabriel Galvis, the former western bloc of the FARC.

It is also the first time that they are former members of the association FARC the forced recruitment of minors, a crime that is a separate case in itself, but which was considered in this case, the third for which the JEP brings charges, and the second that it does so against former members of the former guerrillas.

JEP judges assured at a press conference that these FARC groups committed war crimes, such as a guerilla takeover “implemented without due respect for the principles of distinction and proportionality” established under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), in order to impose its control over this territory in the southwest of the country.

The JEP identified various criminal patterns in the FARC’s actions, such as the fact that the expansion of the guerrillas from the mountains starting in 1993. “It has profoundly affected the civilian population, ancestral territories and communities, and nature.”

“Social and territorial control began with the armed occupation of the territories of indigenous, Afro-Colombian and peasant peoples, overstepping ethnic authorities, and then continued with numerous strategies to achieve social and territorial control of the population”the magistrates considered.

In this advance, they expelled the authorities from every territory, killing hundreds of people and displacing large numbers of the population. But there were also deaths and forced disappearances of the indigenous population, peasants and other populations.

Before the JEP, emerging parties recognized the existence of a policy in the extinct guerrilla group to kill people from the civilian population labeled as informants, collaborators, enemies or opposing leaders of that organization.explained the court.

There was also the persecution of indigenous people, Afro-descendants and peasants who did not adhere to guerrilla rules, trespassing on indigenous reserves and community councils, imposing on them “bases of operations, training camps, recruitment centers and later as a source of funding, through charging what they called ‘tax’ on drug trafficking and illegal mining”.

In addition, for the first time, the JEP accuses the FARC of using, recruiting and recruiting children “as a political-military strategy”especially since the late 1990s and with a “significant increase since 2011”.

Most of the recruits “They were autochthonous or Afro-Colombian, which implied an additional process of affecting their culture, since they were exposed to losing their customs and acquiring completely different ones”considers JEP.

Likewise, the use of anti-personnel mines as “one of the main mechanisms for achieving territorial and social control, and closing communities”executions by the FARC or detention of the population and damage to the environment.

“The pillars of Jacob Arenas and Gabriel Galvis have extensively and permanently affected the environment in northern Cauca and southern Valle del Cauca” by laying mines, explosive attacks and violent invasion of indigenous and Afro-descendant territories, affecting especially the wetlands”he assured the JEP in his first charge of environmental crime.

Macrocase 05, opened in 2018, has a universe of more than 365,000 victims, and it is also the first time that members FARC that they were not part of the management already accused by the JEP in the case of kidnappings.

The ten accused have a period of 30 days to admit the facts and implement or reject them, after which the hearings on the admission will begin. with the participation of the victims, determine whether there is recognition and contribution to the full truth.

In such a case, defendants may receive sanctions that do not include imprisonment, i this will be agreed with the victims for compensation.