JEP charges eight former Colombian military officers with genocide against the Patriotic Union
Colombia's peace tribunal has accused eight former military intelligence agents of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the UP between 1985 and 1993.
Eight former military officers charged with systematic extermination of left-wing party in Colombia
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) on Wednesday charged eight former military intelligence agents of the Colombian army with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against members of the Patriotic Union (UP), the left-wing party founded in 1985 by former guerrillas of the FARC following a failed attempt at peace negotiations. According to elnuevoherald.com.
More than 5,700 members of the movement were massacred in Colombia between 1985 and 1993, as part of a campaign of terror executed by paramilitary groups with the participation of state forces. Detractors of the party at the time accused it of being the political arm of the guerrilla, during one of the most violent periods of the Colombian armed conflict.
According to the tribunal's investigation, there was a "clandestine criminal apparatus within the strategic intelligence units of the national army that gathered information on previously defined targets", said Danilo Rojas, president of the JEP, in a press conference. "They conducted surveillance, they made accusations and they coordinated clandestine operations", he added.
The pattern was consistent: first the victims were monitored in secret and then they were killed or disappeared without a trace, a methodology repeated in several parts of the country. The JEP also charged the former military officers with torture and forced disappearance of fighters hors de combat during the same period, through practices such as violent interrogations aimed at weakening their organisations.
The magistrates investigated 27 incidents, concentrated in the capital, Bogotá. The tribunal, created from the 2016 peace agreement that disarmed the FARC, tries the most serious crimes of the conflict with sentences alternative to imprisonment, in exchange for those responsible making reparations to victims and telling the truth.
The JEP is currently issuing sentences amid a financing crisis. President Abelardo de la Espriella, in power since 7 August and critical of the peace agreement for considering it lenient with former guerrillas, pushed through a budget cut for 2027 that is currently being debated by Congress.
Source: Google News BO — La Paz