{"id":136343,"date":"2024-09-26T12:06:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-26T10:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/?p=136343"},"modified":"2024-09-27T15:46:08","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:46:08","slug":"colombia-first-transitional-justice-adversarial-trial-opens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/136343-colombia-first-transitional-justice-adversarial-trial-opens.html","title":{"rendered":"Colombia\u2019s first transitional justice adversarial trial opens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A highly symbolic trial opened last week in a small courtroom of a torrid city in north-eastern Colombia. Colonel <\/strong>Hern\u00e1n Mej\u00eda Guti\u00e9rrez, an emblematic figure of the \u201cfalse positives\u201d scandal to most Colombians, stayed silent while former subordinates recounted how he led them to disguise unidentified persons as false combat kills. With this case, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) inaugurates its adversarial trials.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

For four hours on the afternoon of September 18th and one more the following morning, retired Colonel Hern\u00e1n Mej\u00eda Guti\u00e9rrez sat silently not far from the man who, two decades ago, was his number two in the \u2018La Popa\u2019 No. 2 Artillery Battalion, in charge of security in a vast cattle-raising and coal mining area<\/a> flanked by mountains in Colombia\u2019s Caribbean region, near the Venezuelan border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heber Hern\u00e1n G\u00f3mez Naranjo, also a retired colonel, recounted how Mej\u00eda pushed since early 2002 for soldiers and officers in the military unit he presided to present the bodies of a dozen unidentified persons as false combat kills. \u201cMy colonel, you talk a lot about honour. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s honourable to give orders to your subordinates and then turn your back on them and wash your hands,\u201d he told him<\/a>, the only moment that he addressed him directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scene took place in a small courtroom in the scorching city of Valledupar. It was the opening of the first adversarial trial<\/a> conducted by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP)<\/a>, the judicial arm of Colombia\u2019s transitional justice<\/a> system stemming from the 2016 peace deal with the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla. Mej\u00eda is accused of being involved in 72 extrajudicial executions between 2002 and 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two former high-ranking Colombian army officers have been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, but represent two opposites of the country\u2019s transitional model. While Mej\u00eda chose not to acknowledge<\/a> his role in the scandal known by the euphemism of \u2018false positives<\/a>\u2019, his interlocutor was one of the 12 military from the La Popa battalion who accepted the JEP\u2019s charges<\/a>. But after admitting his role during a public hearing<\/a> in Valledupar in 2022 and apologising to victims, G\u00f3mez Naranjo is set to receive a more lenient sanction than his former boss will receive if defeated in the trial running until later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Colonel
After admitting his guilt at a public hearing in Valledupar (north-east Colombia) in 2022 and apologising to the victims, Colonel Hern\u00e1n G\u00f3mez Naranjo (centre) recounts how his superior Mej\u00eda (left) asked for unidentified bodies to be presented as fake deaths in combat. Photo: \u00a9 JEP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The JEP\u2019s first adversarial trial<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The JEP\u2019s first adversarial trial has been very different from what Colombians have seen so far from the special tribunal. Instead of carefully choreographed public hearings in which former members of the military or FARC listened to the painful accounts of dozens of victims and admitted their participation in extrajudicial executions or kidnappings, the trial against Mej\u00eda has a staccato rhythm more typical of an ordinary criminal trial, with the fragmentary responses and small theatricalities of interrogations and cross-examinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also not taking place in a large auditorium decorated with giant photos of victims and filled with their relatives. In the anodyne courtroom on the fifth floor of Valledupar\u2019s tallest building, only ten victims silently follow the judicial proceedings, some of them wearing their relatives\u2019 faces printed on T-shirts. Their voices are only heard when one of them takes the stand to testify, as when Alith Pacheco narrated how his brother Anuar de Armas was killed in February 2004 by paramilitaries of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) and his body presented by the army as a National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel killed in combat. The windows reveal five overlapping layers of emerald green to greyish purple foothills, as the country\u2019s highest mountain range, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, rises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s not an ordinary criminal trial either. It wasn\u2019t decided until a week before it would be public, as the defence and the JEP\u2019s own prosecutor\u2019s office requested that it be kept confidential. The three justices who will rule on it decided however that the transitional justice\u2019s principle of publicity prevailed and ordered a live broadcast<\/a> \u2013 which reached 19,700 views \u2013 except when there\u2019s a security risk for a witness. It was also unclear whether victims\u2019 lawyers would be able to intervene, something that the criminal justice system excludes but that the JEP has favoured. Mej\u00eda\u2019s defence and the Inspector General\u2019s Office opposed it, and after the justices\u2019 decision allowing it, the defence appealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mej\u00eda<\/strong>, emblematic figure of the \u201cfalse positives\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

During the trial\u2019s first three days, Colonel Mej\u00eda remained unmoved, his hands forming a triangle on the table, or his arms folded. From time to time, he\u2019d jot something in his notebook. The rest of the time his gaze remained fixed, inscrutable, on the witness stand to his left. He spoke only once. \u201cYour Honour, as I have said and I reiterate, for the truth and the history that the JEP must reconstruct for this country, for the respect of victims and dignity of the institutions, I do not accept the charges brought against me. I cannot accept what I never did,\u201d he said at the outset<\/a>, dressed in a grey pinstripe suit and blue tie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To most Colombians, Mej\u00eda has been one of the emblematic figures of the \u2018false positives\u2019. Considered one of the army\u2019s most decorated officers<\/a> and holder of five public order medals, Mej\u00eda was relieved of his post<\/a> in January 2007 by Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos, during the administration of \u00c1lvaro Uribe, in one of the first corrective measures before the scandal broke publicly. It was also the first time in history<\/a> that a defence minister publicly acknowledged the links of a senior active military officer with paramilitaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His case was referred to the Attorney General\u2019s Office following a whistle-blower complaint by one of his subordinates, in Santos\u2019 words, over possible \u201clinks to paramilitarism, human rights violations, casualties that may not be the result of military operations, and acts of corruption\u201d. Six years later, he was sentenced by the ordinary justice system<\/a> to 19 years in prison for links to paramilitaries. Years later, the political faction led by Uribe started using his case to oppose peace negotiations with FARC, disseminating his thesis<\/a> that he was the victim of an alleged plot hatched by then President Santos and his peace commissioner Sergio Jaramillo, or that the guerrillas had a \u2018special secretariat\u2019<\/a> that secretly controlled the state and even the church and large corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The colonel who designed the criminal plan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Colonel Mej\u00eda is accused of \u201cdevising, designing and executing, through an illegal organised apparatus of power, a criminal plan that consisted of murdering civilians and presenting them as combat casualties, motivated by giving society a false perception of security and seeking to consolidate his image as the best officer in the National Army\u201d, according to the indictment by the JEP\u2019s Investigation and Accusation Unit. It is the body in charge of accusing those who \u2013 after previous investigations<\/a> conducted by the tribunal\u2019s Acknowledgement Chamber \u2013 refuse to admit their role<\/a>, clarify the truth and redress victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to prosecutor Samuel Serrano in Valledupar, there is \u201ccopious evidence\u201d that Mej\u00eda was aware of and participated in 72 of the 75 extrajudicial executions attributed to the La Popa battalion during his command between January 2002 and November 2003. These crimes occurred, the prosecutor argued, in three modalities. Initially, the military banded together with paramilitaries, who targeted or killed people who would end up being presented as false combat kills, in what he described as a \u201cmutually beneficial\u201d alliance. They then went on to personally murder civilians. And in parallel, they executed combatants who\u2019d surrendered or were hors de combat to inflate their casualty numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Call for the harshest transitional justice sentence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was irrelevant whether Mej\u00eda was present or not in the place where events took place. Members of the illegal organised apparatus of power that he devised, created and now directed knew what tasks each of them had been entrusted with [and] once again the cycle of crime was activated,\u201d the prosecutor said. One received from paramilitaries the location where they\u2019d find false casualties and simulate a combat, another took them to the morgue in Valledupar and accompanied the officials who\u2019d carry out the autopsy, another wrote the patrol report and the false operations order used to legalise the alleged combat, and all of them then coordinated the stories they\u2019d tell the justice system. In prosecutor Serrano\u2019s words, \u201cthe train was in motion: it was enough to get on it to commit these crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The battalion\u2019s victims, the prosecutor explained, were young men and in some \u201ccondition of vulnerability\u201d. Out of a total of 129 victims, 39 were farmers and 30 informal workers, a third never finished school and five were children. Thirteen were indigenous Kankuamos or Wiwas from the Sierra Nevada. \u201cI\u2019d like you to think about what has happened in your lives over the past 22 years: many finished studying, built a home, said goodbye to loved ones and welcomed others, saw or lived in new places. All of this was denied to 72 persons, as well as to their parents, siblings, children and wives\u201d. Arguing that Mej\u00eda \u201cwas given multiple opportunities (...) to acknowledge responsibility\u201d but \u201ccast them aside\u201d, he called for Colombia\u2019s harshest transitional justice sentence of 20 years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe murderous train was not created by my client\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On the other side, the defence characterised Mej\u00eda as an exemplary military official who \u201csaved [Cesar department, whose capital city is Valledupar] from the plagues ravaging it\u201d and received the battalion command at a turbulent time, three months after FARC kidnapped and murdered<\/a> Consuelo Ara\u00fajo, the godmother of Valledupar\u2019s famous vallenato music festival and the country\u2019s minister of culture until just six months before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis wasn\u2019t a murderous train created by my client,\u201d said defence lawyer Germ\u00e1n Navarrete, picking up on the prosecutor\u2019s metaphor in a country that has no passenger rail transport. The defence didn\u2019t deny that crimes were committed in the battalion, but sought to distance Colonel Mej\u00eda from them, insisting that he never gave an illegal order. \u201cThere were soldiers who killed and officers who promoted crimes within the battalion. We have them in the police and everywhere because of the great corrupting power of drug trafficking and criminality. But we cannot blame commanders for everything that some of their subordinates do,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat train of death was already there\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to the defence, Mej\u00eda\u2019s leadership conducted 500 successful military operations in two years and prosecuted soldiers who diverted weapons to the paramilitaries, \u201calways adhering to military regulations in force at the time\u201d. He had 2,000 soldiers under his command in \u201ca battalion the size of a brigade\u201d, meaning context, he argued, should not be considered sufficient evidence to convict him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday we are prosecuting him for what some lieutenants and officers and a colonel did,\u201d Navarrete said, referring to the 12 officers who, after being indicted alongside Mej\u00eda in July 2021, have accepted responsibility and are still awaiting their more leniente 5-to-8-year sentence in a non-prison setting. Two already testified against Mejia and eight others should do so at the remaining three hearings later this year. The defence lawyer portrayed them as \u201ca gang of hired killers committed to paramilitaries and guerrillas who will now serve as witnesses\u201d and with whom the prosecution \u201cmade a convenient alliance,\u201d in which they receive favourable criminal treatments. \u201cHow strange that [Mej\u00eda] created a train of death and it only ever worked in Valledupar! That train was already there,\u201d he closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commander according to his subordinates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Among the first group of 63 witnesses requested by the prosecution, three served under Mej\u00eda in Valledupar and recounted several of the crimes in which they were directly involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Colonel G\u00f3mez Naranjo recounted how Mej\u00eda instructed him to go at night with a group of soldiers to a rural road near Valledupar where he\u2019d spot a bonfire. Right in front of the place, a car fled while firing shots into the air, after which they found a uniformed corpse in the bush, which they presented as a combat kill<\/a>. \u201cThere was no combat, the dead man was already there,\u201d he said, adding that he raised his concern to Mej\u00eda, who told him \u201cnot to worry, as he was a bandit\u201d. G\u00f3mez Naranjo, who was a major at the time, said he received similar oral instructions from Mej\u00eda, picking up corpses without even firing a shot and legalising them as combat casualties. No one forced him, he underscored several times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lieutenant Nelson Llanos \u2013 who was detained for eight years but wasn\u2019t deemed as most responsible for these crimes \u2013 then recounted how on another occasion he arrived at a designated spot in Patillal where four bodies were found. G\u00f3mez Naranjo ordered him to prepare the operations order detailing the \u2018combat\u2019 but, after the 21-year-old refused, sent him to talk to Mej\u00eda. \u201cThere are always things in life that you remember very well,\u201d he said, his hand clutching a golden rosary. According to his account<\/a>, the colonel told him, \u201cthey were bandits and had to die, ok?\u201d He obeyed because, in his words, \u201cwhen the battalion commander speaks to you in those terms, you can\u2019t even utter a word\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A more cryptic account was given by Manuel Valent\u00edn Padilla, who was often seen in the battalion dressed as a civilian but in fact was \u2013 unbeknownst to others \u2013 a sergeant in counter-intelligence duties. Padilla narrated how, hidden behind his alias \u2018Hugo\u2019 and his disguise as a banana seller in the public market, he became the human courier<\/a> between the paramilitaries and Mej\u00eda, reporting directly to him messages detailing where they\u2019d find bodies of new casualties. For this role he was indicted by the JEP and accepted the charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lieutenant
According to lieutenant Nelson Llanos account, the colonel Mej\u00eda told him, when he refused to report on a combat that had not taken place, \u201cthey were bandits and had to die, ok?\u201d. Photo: \u00a9 JEP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy image of the honourable officer was shattered\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The names of their victims were surprisingly absent from their testimonies. Asked if he\u2019d ever known them, Colonel G\u00f3mez Naranjo replied \u201cnever\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the contrary, their emotion was visible when they recounted the moment they decided to break with their former boss. For G\u00f3mez Naranjo, it happened when, while both were detained, he\u2019d asked about several innocent indicted soldiers and, according to his account, Mej\u00eda told him not to worry about them. \u201cThat\u2019s when I saw that the leader we\u2019d defended for so long wasn\u2019t who we thought he was. My image of the honourable officer who was close to his troops was shattered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lieutenant Llanos, who described Mej\u00eda with awe as \u201cthe person we all wanted to become one day\u201d, said that his turning point came when, having been deprived of his liberty for four years, he heard him say that \u201cthere\u2019s nothing in those [criminal] cases\u201d. At that moment Llanos replied, according to his account, that \u201cafter reading the case files and realising what we did, he couldn\u2019t go on manipulating me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politicians who defended him are now silent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Besides the indictment, another significant change occurred during the six years of the JEP\u2019s investigations. Despite his combative attitude, Mej\u00eda doesn\u2019t seem to enjoy today the ascendancy and magnetism of the past, when the political sector most critical of peace negotiations with FARC lauded him as a \u201cvictim of infamy<\/a>\u201d and a \u201cgreat hero<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many politicians who fiercely defended him a decade ago are now silent. Former president Uribe, who spread<\/a> the thesis of an alleged conspiracy against him, last tweeted about him<\/a> in 2018, the year Mej\u00eda flirted with being a presidential candidate<\/a>. It is not yet clear whether Uribe will testify on Mej\u00eda\u2019s behalf as requested by his defence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uribe\u2019s party, the Democratic Centre, has similarly not spoken about him since 2016<\/a>. Several of its most visible senators, like Paola Holgu\u00edn<\/a> and Paloma Valencia<\/a>, also ceased defending him around that time. Only Mar\u00eda Fernanda Cabal, currently a presidential pre-candidate and part of the party\u2019s far right, has continued doing so<\/a>, even from the courtroom<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Invitamos a reflexionar sobre lo dicho por el Cr Hern\u00e1n Mejia pic.twitter.com\/ZUAKTnV2b4<\/a><\/p>— \u00c1lvaro Uribe V\u00e9lez (@AlvaroUribeVel) December 6, 2015<\/a><\/blockquote>