Twenty-three years later, with this macabre and moving account, the Colombian transitional justice tribunal, known as the Special Jurisdiction for Peace or JEP<\/a>, began reading<\/a> the ruling convicting<\/a> retired Colonel Hern\u00e1n Mej\u00eda Guti\u00e9rrez to 20 years in prison, the highest penalty contemplated by the special tribunal stemming from the 2016 peace agreement, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. C\u00e1ceres\u2019s was one of 72 extrajudicial executions, known to Colombians by the euphemism \u2018false positives<\/a>\u2019, for which the commander of the battalion operating in a vast region of cattle and coal-mining savannahs<\/a> flanked by mountains in the Caribbean, near the border with Venezuela, was held responsible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ruling announced five days before Christmas closed a highly symbolic circle: in late September, the JEP convicted 12 former military<\/a> officials who were Mej\u00eda\u2019s subordinates \u2013 including the colonel who was his second-in-command \u2013 for their role in those same events, in one of its first two substantive legal decisions against those most responsible for serious crimes in Colombia\u2019s half-century-long armed conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, their punishment was more lenient, ranging from five-to-eight years in a non-prison setting, because they acknowledged their responsibility for these crimes, publicly apologised<\/a> to their victims, contributed to the truth and committed to redressing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mej\u00eda, on the other hand, chose not to admit<\/a> his role and asked for it to be proven in court. Now, a year, thirteen hearings and fifty witnesses later, the JEP has found him guilty, in what is also the first decision to come out of its second, adversarial track. In fact, several of the witnesses testifying against him<\/a> were his former subordinates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was these two faces of Colombia\u2019s transitional justice<\/a> that presiding justice Reinere Jaramillo referred to when she said that \u201ctoday we shouldn\u2019t be announcing a ruling that resolves a dispute,\u201d but rather \u201cwhat should have happened is that the dialogue between those who participated in the conflict and submitted to this jurisdiction and the victims should have led to the clarification of the truth and to its acknowledgment.\u201d Two other former officers from the same military unit, Colonel Juan Carlos Figueroa and Major Jos\u00e9 Pastor Ruiz Mahecha, who like Mej\u00eda don\u2019t admit to their role, are awaiting their own trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mej\u00eda, who had already been sentenced by the ordinary criminal justice<\/a> to 19 years in prison for his links to the paramilitaries, announced that he will appeal<\/a> the sentence, which means that his case will now be reviewed by an appeals section of the special court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For most Colombians, Mej\u00eda has been one of the emblematic figures of the \u2018false positives\u2019. Considered one of the most decorated officers<\/a> in the army, Mej\u00eda was relieved of his post<\/a> in January 2007 by then Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos, during the \u00c1lvaro Uribe administration, in one of the first corrective measures taken before the scandal broke publicly. It was also the first time in history that a defence minister publicly acknowledged the \u201coperational link\u201d, in the ruling\u2019s words, between senior military officers and paramilitaries, which according to the JEP the homicide of C\u00e1ceres \u201crenders visible\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After assessing all the evidence provided by the special tribunal\u2019s prosecution unit, much of it originating from the original indictment by the JEP\u2019s Acknowledgment Chamber, the judges concluded that \u201cthe defendant\u2019s participation was neither marginal nor passive; on the contrary, it was structural and decisive in the configuration and consolidation of the aforementioned pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the ruling\u2019s words, Mej\u00eda \u201cused his clout and reputation to influence his closest officers in order to initiate, promote and consolidate a criminal scheme\u201d to murder and disappear civilians unrelated to the armed conflict and present their bodies as the result of false operational successes. These were not \u201cautonomous actions by his subordinates,\u201d the JEP concluded, but \u201ccrimes (...) perpetrated within the framework of organised power structures, with a high degree of coordination.\u201d Colonel Mej\u00eda \u201chad not only formal command, but also material control over operations, reports, numbers and the construction of an institutional narrative aimed at making actions appear legal when in fact their results were totally illegal\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With this, the court rejected Mej\u00eda\u2019s defence, which presented him<\/a> as an exemplary military officer who saved the Cesar region from \u201cthe plagues ravaging it,\u201d including FARC. While not denying the crimes committed in the battalion, it argued that the colonel never gave an illegal order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA weight has been lifted off our shoulders after 23 years,\u201d says Armando Pumarejo, whose son Carlos Alberto was murdered<\/a> inside the La Popa battalion on June 22, 2002, and presented in the media as a FARC militiaman. His death, now recognized as the homicide of a protected person, deprived a two-year-old girl and two twins, who were in the womb of his partner Gelka Hinojosa at the time, of their father. Mej\u00eda has now been found responsible because, according to the JEP, \u201che issued the order for Operation Coraza 037A, instructing his subordinates to shoot (...) and issued subsequent orders aimed at making the events appear to be legitimate combat in which two casualties were reported.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDespite my skepticism, because I was somewhat pessimistic, we are seeing these decisions. We were able to clear Carlos Alberto\u2019s name,\u201d says Armando, who, notebook in hand, followed all the hearings in the trial against Mej\u00eda. For him, the greatest satisfaction came from the 12 officials who admitted to their role because, in his words, \u201ceverything fits\u201d with what they knew had happened. Mej\u00eda\u2019s conviction, which he believes was rendered possible by those testimonies, leaves no doubt that \u201cthe fuel for that criminal train was the blood of our relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although there are still some contradictions that he is asking the JEP to clarify, especially regarding two soldiers who have not been charged and are awaiting the resolution of their legal situations, the transitional process has been for Pumarejo the difference between \u201cnever even receiving a summons to court\u201d in the ordinary justice system and \u201chaving a voice and being listened to.\u201d \u201cSo many truths could not go unpunished between heaven and earth,\u201d he sighs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mej\u00eda\u2019s conviction is a milestone for another reason. The political sector led by former President Alvaro Uribe, in whose government he was removed from the army following allegations by a subordinate, used his case to oppose the peace negotiations with the FARC. In their narrative<\/a>, the colonel was the victim of an alleged plot hatched by President Juan Manuel Santos and his peace commissioner Sergio Jaramillo, who had been the defense minister and deputy minister who initiated the measures that made it possible to put an end to the criminal phenomenon. They also cited the disgraced colonel\u2019s theory that the guerrilla had a \u2018special secretariat\u2019<\/a> to secretly control the state and even the church and the largest companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, during the JEP\u2019s eight years of investigations and trial, Mej\u00eda lost his influence and magnetism among a political sector that used to called him a \u2018great<\/a> hero\u2019 and \u2018victim of infamy<\/a>\u2018. Many politicians who defended him ardently a decade ago are now silent. Former President Uribe, who spread<\/a> the theory of an alleged conspiracy against him and posed with signs<\/a> bearing the title of his book, tweeted about him for the last time<\/a> in 2018, the year Mej\u00eda flirted with becoming a presidential candidate<\/a>. Nor did he testify in his favour, as his defence initially requested<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Uribe\u2019s party, the Democratic Centre, has not mentioned him since 2016<\/a>. Several of its most visible figures, such as its current presidential candidate Paloma Valencia<\/a> and Congresswoman Paola Holgu\u00edn<\/a>, also stopped defending him around that time. Only Mar\u00eda Fernanda Cabal, until recently a presidential candidate and part of the party\u2019s far-right wing, has continued to defend him<\/a> after his conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The transitional justice track inaugurated by Mej\u00eda still has much work to do, although \u2013 as a Justice Info analysis<\/a> published last July showed \u2013 most of the JEP\u2019s indictees have chosen to acknowledge their crimes. Nine out of ten have done so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of December 2025, 21 persons had been referred to the JEP\u2019s Investigation and Prosecution Unit (UIA), the body responsible for prosecuting or closing investigations against those who, following preliminary investigations<\/a> conducted by the tribunal\u2019s Acknowledgment Chamber, do not admit their role<\/a>, provide truth or redress victims. That number includes 19 former military officers, a former FARC rebel and one civilian \u2013 although one military, Colonel Cipriano Pe\u00f1a, died after being charged. Except for two, all have been charged for their participation in false positives. This reluctant group includes several former senior military officers: six generals and eleven colonels. Two of them, Colonels Juan Carlos Figueroa and Fernando Moncayo Guancha, have been living in the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They are joined by H\u00e9ctor Albeidis Arboleda, better known as the \u2018Nurse\u2019, accused<\/a> of forced abortions within FARC and referred for failing to even admit to his membership in that group. There is also former congressman Luis Fernando Almario, the most prominent politician in transitional justice, who was accused of being a co-author<\/a> of a \u201ccriminal plan to capture the state\u201d in alliance with the FARC, consisting of exterminating his rival political group, led by the Turbay Cote family, in the Amazonian department of Caquet\u00e1.<\/p>\n\n\n\t Although Mej\u00eda was the first to go through the adversarial track and every new procedure brings adjustments, the timing of his case raises questions about what is to come. Originally charged by the JEP\u2019s Acknowledgment Chamber in July 2021, his case was referred to the prosecuting unit six months later after the colonel refused to own up to his role. In July 2023, after a year and a half of investigation, the prosecutor\u2019s office formally accused him, and another year later, in September 2024, his trial began. Fifteen months later, the decision was handed down. That means it took a total of four years to reach a conviction since his case was referred to the UIA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The timelines have been similar for the other four defendants to date. Colonels Juan Carlos Figueroa and David Herley Guzm\u00e1n were charged two years after their cases reached the UIA, a period that increased to three years in the case of Major Jos\u00e9 Pastor Ruiz. None of the three has gone to trial. Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s trial was scheduled to begin in July 2025 but has been postponed twice<\/a>, first because he requested an extension to prepare and then because he revoked his defence lawyer\u2019s power of attorney. In total, he has changed his defence four times. There has been no public news since October about a new date. Neither Figueroa nor former congressman Almario have been called to trial by the court, despite also having been formally charged for more than two years. When asked if it had weighed moving from the current logic of individual accusations to grouping some defendants according to macro cases, as the original indictments do, the UIA told Justice Info that it has not considered it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least one of these trials will have a very high public profile. Although the JEP has so far indicted 21 generals, including three former commanders-in-chief of the Army and one of the Armed Forces, none has captured the public attention like Mario Montoya<\/a>. This general, who led the Army between 2006 and 2008, coinciding with the peak of extrajudicial executions, promoted \u2013 according to the JEP\u2019s original indictment \u2013 \u201cthe message that combat casualties were the only indicator of success\u201d. \u201cDon\u2019t bring me problems, bring me litres of blood,\u201d he used to say<\/a> to his subordinates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among all the cases before the JEP prosecutor\u2019s office, one lies in an interesting limbo. Indicted by the JEP in July 2022 as responsible for extrajudicial executions in Casanare, Colonel Germ\u00e1n Alberto Le\u00f3n initially refused to acknowledge his responsibility, so his case was referred to the adversarial track. Once in the UIA, however, he decided to accept it<\/a>, prompting the prosecutor\u2019s office to return his case to the court. Now the justices of the non-acknowledgment section must decide his future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One possibility is that Le\u00f3n will fall on an intermediate route contemplated by<\/a> Colombia\u2019s transitional justice<\/a>. Having acknowledged responsibility, but doing so belatedly, he could receive a sentence halfway between the 5-to-8 years in a non-penitentiary environment designed for those who own up to their role and the 15-to-20 years in prison for those who do not and are convicted in trial. That intermediate sentence would be 5-to-8 years in prison, subject to the same conditions of admitting their crimes, contributing to the truth and providing reparations to the victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These lengthy periods for filing charges and reaching judicial decisions, which are not exclusive to the UIA but extend to the entire JEP<\/a>, raise questions about whether the Colombian transitional tribunal will have enough time to fulfil its mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In total, the JEP has a legal deadline of 10 years<\/a> to bring charges and an additional five years to conclude its activities, including handing down sentences against those most responsible and resolving the legal situation<\/a> of some 12,000 persons. Given that it began work<\/a> on 15 January 2008, this means that transitional justice has only two more years to bring charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That clock is a challenge for both tracks, not just the prosecuting unit. The Acknowledgment Chamber has unveiled preliminary charges in seven of its 11 macro cases, but has only filed formal charges (called \u2018conclusion resolutions\u2019) in two of them. Two of the original seven cases, opened seven years ago, only saw their first indictments in December, and four more, opened between 2022 and 2023, have not yet seen any. That means the current pace of two to three years to file final indictments will not work in the final stretch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intersection of the two tracks\u2019 current timelines raises difficult questions. Will the Acknowledgment Chamber run out of time to file all of its remaining indictments? Will the JEP prosecutor\u2019s office change its view of individual accusations given the tight deadlines? Will any defendants be tempted not to confess and bet on the UIA running out of time to charge them? Could this harm the incentive system of Colombia\u2019s transitional justice, which combines carrots and sticks to encourage acknowledgment of responsibility and reduce the number of cases that go to trial? Could this lead to less satisfaction for victims, who expect more truth and more public acts of forgiveness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amidst the milestone that is the 20-year prison sentence handed down to Colonel Mej\u00eda for dozens of extrajudicial killings that he refused to admit to, these existential questions hang over the special tribunal that has managed to get most of those responsible for serious crimes in the Colombian conflict to face their victims.<\/p>\n\n\nThe end of the JEP\u2019s first adversarial trial<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Colombia_judge-Reinere-Jaramillo_@JEP.jpg\")
The colonel who \u201cinitiated, promoted and consolidated a criminal scheme\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were able to clear Carlos Alberto\u2019s name\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Politicians who defended Mej\u00eda keep silent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
17 military, a former guerrilla and a politician in waiting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Delays in the adversarial track<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Is a third track emerging?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The JEP countdown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Graphic](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Colombia_6402_@JusticeInfo-540x360.jpg\")
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