From Valledupar, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, provided an assessment of what its management has been like in 2023, throughout the national territory. In this sense, the president and magistrate Roberto Carlos Vidal, and the executive secretary, Harvey Suárez, indicated that through their investigations and findings, the entity has contributed to building memories of the conflict to offer truth and justice to the country, especially to the victims of more than 50 years of atrocities.
The public event broadcast live from the Popular University of Cesar; had the participation of the Executive Secretariat, the Investigation and Prosecution Unit (UIA) and the judiciary, who told the country how the application of restorative justice is progressing, what the main findings are and what has happened to those who are not found guilty. top managers. In addition, they discussed the progress of the 11 macro cases, the ethnic-racial, territorial and gender approaches and how the participation of victims in the judicial process has been achieved.
This accountability took place in an area of the country that has witnessed the progress of the JEP. There, in July 2022, the Truth Recognition Hearing was held for 12 defendants accused of murders and forced disappearances within the framework of Case 03, Caribbean Coast Subcase. In addition, the work of the First Instance Section for Cases of Recognition of Truth and Responsibility of the Peace Tribunal is being carried out there, which is preparing to impose the first sanctions on members of the public force who accepted responsibility for events perpetrated in the Caribbean Coast.
“The jurisdiction decided to make its accountability this time in Valledupar because we have a very strong work in Cesar, La Guajira and Magdalena, where there are a series of cases that call for investigation by the judiciary and because, in addition, we want to announce the opening of a permanent office in this territory, which will facilitate the participation of victims and all civil society in our processes,” highlighted the president of the JEP, magistrate Roberto Vidal.
Decentralizing justice and reaching the territories that suffered the strongest impacts of the conflict in Colombia has been one of the JEP’s main commitments. Bringing the entity’s processes closer to the communities encourages their participation and puts at the center of judicial action those who suffered crimes such as kidnapping, forced disappearance, murders and disappearances, in which all irregular actors in the conflict are involved, including State agents, public officials and civil third parties.
According to the Department of Victim Assistance, the JEP has accredited almost eight thousand individual victims and 300 collective subjects, which make up nearly 300 thousand people, to participate in the judicial process. Of them, 925 are on the Caribbean Coast and 1,068 are in the accreditation process in the 11 open macro cases in this region.
In the cases of the seven appearing parties who did not accept responsibility, the Investigation and Accusation Unit of the JEP already presented to the Section of Absence of Recognition of Truth the accusation against Luis Fernando Almario Rojas, within the framework of Case 01, and against the retired colonels Publio Hernán Mejía and Juan Carlos Figueroa Suárez, in Case 03. If found guilty in this adversarial procedure, these defendants face sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
Likewise, this year the Truth Recognition Chamber made progress in announcing five new charges. The first of them, which occurred within the framework of Case 05, which prioritizes the north of Cauca and the south of Valle del Cauca, charged 14 war crimes and crimes against humanity to 10 members of the Jacobo Arenas and Gabriel Galvis mobile columns who They were part of the old Western Bloc of the extinct Farc-EP. Among other crimes, attacks against the civilian population, use of antipersonnel mines, murders and disappearances of leaders of ethnic and peasant communities, and persecution, recruitment and use of girls and boys are charged.
At the same time that the Truth Recognition Chamber moved forward with determination in the accusations that activated a new procedural stage in the JEP, the Legal Situations Definition Chamber granted 656 transitional, conditional and anticipated freedoms and rejected the submissions of 2,857 people who had requested entry to the entity. One of them, precisely, was that of former paramilitary chief Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, known as ‘Jorge 40’, for not providing full truth. On the contrary, this year, the Jurisdiction exceptionally accepted the submission of Salvatore Mancuso as a subject functionally and materially incorporated into the public force, between 1989 and 2004. The Chamber for Definition of Legal Situations concluded that Mancuso, as a hinge or point subject of connection, he had the power to “pull the strings” of military, business, and political structures and influence high-ranking state agents.
In total, around 14 thousand people have submitted to the JEP to resolve their legal situation. Among them, 9,877 from the FARC-EP, 3,873 from the public force and 184 among state agents and civilians.
The Jurisdiction has also excluded or expelled 74 appearing parties. For its part, the Amnesty or Pardon Chamber has granted 660 amnesties and has defined 457 conditional freedoms for ex-combatants of the extinct FARC-EP. Likewise, the judiciary has handed over, in a dignified manner, the bodies of 47 victims of forced disappearance to their families.
The balance provided by the JEP indicates that, to date, the entity received 1,052 reports from victims’ organizations, civil society and State institutions that served as a basis for opening the macro cases, including the four new ones that were announced and that finish delimiting the universe of crimes that will be investigated, tried and punished by the JEP.
