He also questioned the fact that Rodrigo Londo\u00f1o, the rebel group\u2019s last commander-in-chief, who was convicted last year<\/a> by the JEP of war crimes and crimes against humanity, had been granted permission<\/a> by the special tribunal to attend a forum in Spain. \u201cThat bandit Timochenko deserves to be imprisoned for life. I\u2019m going to work on that,\u201d he said, using Londo\u00f1o\u2019s nom-de-guerre, before adding that \u201cno apparent formalities can hide the fact that the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the FARC leaders remain unpunished\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eleven years ago, when he was already a high-profile criminal lawyer, De la Espriella advocated a much more lenient approach than the one established in the peace agreement for those tried as most responsible of atrocious crimes, including allowing them to serve their sentences whilst remaining at liberty. In a book entitled \u2018The Legal Way Out of the Negotiation Process with the FARC\u2019, published in 2015 by his legal firm De La Espriella Lawyers Enterprise and which is scarcely in circulation, he put forward proposals that contradict his current positions and would be anathema to his political base today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the book, a copy of which lies in the National Library<\/a>, De la Espriella proposed that those guilty of serious crimes should even serve their sentences outside Colombia. He also argued that the peace agreement should be binding for the entire State, and that organised crime groups stemming from the paramilitaries \u2013 known as \u2018criminal gangs\u2019 or \u2018bacrim\u2019 \u2013 should have access to transitional justice measures, given that the Colombian state failed to guarantee them sufficient reintegration measures. This argument is similar to that put forward by outgoing president Gustavo Petro in his \u2018total peace\u2019 policy, which involved opening talks with groups such as the Clan del Golfo or the FARC dissidents who walked away from the peace deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July 2015, when the government\u2019s and the FARC\u2019s negotiating teams had been in talks for three years and had been bogged down over a year in discussions on victims and transitional justice, De la Espriella published a book in which \u2013 as the back cover states \u2013 he \u201cseeks to contribute, from a legal and judicial perspective, to the resolution of an armed conflict which, in his view, is meaningless\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this hardback edition, published by his law firm De la Espriella Lawyers Enterprise, the criminal lawyer developed \u2013 in the words of the author of the foreword, the late criminal lawyer Juan Fern\u00e1ndez Carrasquilla \u2013 \u201cthe very assertive thesis that a way forward does indeed exist, without the need to adopt positions of uncompromising criminalisation that could frustrate the process towards peace agreements or, at some point, lead to counterproductive social outcomes\u201d. Moreover, he adds, \u201cit is clear that the model adopted with the FARC-EP would also have to serve for subsequent peace efforts with the ELN\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the points that De la Espriella now criticises regarding the JEP and the peace agreement signed by Juan Manuel Santos\u2019s government \u2013 and even the failed \u2018total peace\u2019 policy of Petro \u2013 coincide with or resemble ideas that he vehemently defended in a text that today appears to be available only at the National Library, which holds the legal deposit of all books published in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout its 120 pages, the now president-elect argued \u2013 at a time when the nature of the Colombian model was still unclear \u2013 that \u201cthe implementation of transitional justice mechanisms is, within the Colombian framework, an opportunity to realise legal and social benefits that will foster peace and generosity, without compromising the essence of international obligations and human rights\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To achieve this, he suggested to resort to \u201cboth substantive and procedural criminal law provisions that entail a more lenient treatment than the ordinary one\u201d, including \u201clower sentences, allowing for parole and\/or recognising reductions in sentences\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n De la Espriella argued that, whilst there is no place for amnesties for the most serious crimes and the Colombian State has national and international obligations to investigate, prosecute and punish the most serious crimes committed during a 52-year-long armed conflict, there is no international rule dictating what the sentence should be for those who committed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was this legal reality that led the Santos government to introduce the Legal Framework for Peace, which made the negotiations with the FARC in Havana viable, and to agree with the guerrilla group on a transitional justice system focused on those most responsible for these crimes and on ensuring that victims\u2019 rights are upheld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The logic behind the model currently in place is that, provided these former guerrillas or military officials own up to their role, tell the truth and provide redress to their victims, they may receive a 5-to-8-year sentence of \u2018effective restriction of liberty\u2019 \u2013 a non-prison setting which must entail a restriction on their rights and movements (a requirement of the agreement which, as Justice Info explained, has not<\/a> yet been fully implemented<\/a> by the JEP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although he now speaks of \u201clife prisoners\u201d, in his book the new president stated that it need not be prison. \u201cDeprivation of liberty is not the only way to deliver justice,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe sentence does not necessarily have to be served in a prison facility. The convicted person could even serve their sentence whilst remaining at liberty, through work activities that facilitate their reintegration and\/or their participation in a social reintegration programme,\u201d he added elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But De la Espriella went far beyond the model set out in the peace deal: in his view, it is possible that \u201cthe greatest reduction in sentence proposed arises from the serving of the sentence and, in addition, from the possibility of freedom whilst doing so\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In another passage, he stated that \u201cfreedom may operate in the form of a suspended sentence and, in this way, the requirements relating to the investigation, prosecution and punishment of serious crime would be met, given that deprivation of liberty is not the only penalty that can be imposed\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With greater emphasis, and in bold, he argued that \u201cthe possibility of serving the sentence whilst at liberty alters the axiom that the only rehabilitative sentence is one involving deprivation of liberty\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Contrary to his attack on the JEP over Londo\u00f1o\u2019s permission to travel to Madrid, in the book published a decade ago De la Espriella proposed that the sentence could even, preferably, be served in a country other than Colombia. \u201cIt is proposed that, as part of the alternative sentence, it be served outside the country so that demobilised combatants can learn various trades that will provide them with sources of lawful employment,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, more favourable terms than those agreed in Havana in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n De la Espriella, the writer, not only agreed with the possibility of handing down alternative sentences, but also with imposing requirements on perpetrators as a condition for granting them a more lenient sentence \u2013 something similar to what the peace agreement calls the \u2018conditionality regime\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey could be required to fulfil the following obligations in order to access the benefits set out: to tell the truth [and] to ask for forgiveness publicly,\u201d he stated in one section. Public apology, he elaborated in another section, helps \u201ccreate a collective awareness of the need to ensure that criminal behaviour is not repeated\u201d. He also envisaged a truth commission to gather information on kidnappings and enforced disappearances, which, in his words, would allow for the \u201crecognition of the full, harsh, complex truth, unvarnished\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The advantage of these conditions, according to him, is clear. \u201cFulfilment of such obligations would allow victims to feel that their pain is acknowledged, whilst also acting as a preventive mechanism to ensure that what happened doesn\u2019t happen again, as it enables the perpetrator or participant in such acts to become aware of the harm caused,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For members of the FARC, in addition to laying down their arms and demobilising, the now president-elect added other possible conditions, such as handing over all hostages in their custody, providing information on those who may have died whilst in captivity, and releasing minors from their ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conditions of truth and forgiveness would apply not only to the guerrillas but also to the military. For the latter, De la Espriella proposed a \u201cspecial regime\u201d whereby \u201cit would be taken into account that offences committed during the conflict could be subject to special treatment\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, something similar to what was provided for in the peace agreement and is currently being implemented by the JEP, which, in the interests of the principle of symmetry, has indicted 200 former members of the security forces, has declared 3,271 of them<\/a> not to be most responsible, and has already resolved the legal situation of 605 of them by waiving criminal prosecution. It has granted more than 2,000 of them criminal benefits similar to those afforded to former guerrillas, including conditional release and deprivation of liberty in military units. This is a point on which De la Espriella has not wavered, either as a candidate or as president-elect, but which has historically been a key campaign issue<\/a> for current political allies like former President \u00c1lvaro Uribe and former presidential candidate Paloma Valencia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Likewise, the JEP sentenced Londo\u00f1o and FARC's entire former leadership following a three-year investigation<\/a> which documented 21,396 kidnappings committed by that guerrilla. The seven former members of its Secretariat have acknowledged their responsibility<\/a>, publicly apologised to their victims and provided information on many of those abductions \u2013 conditions necessary for them to receive 5-to-8-year sentences in a non-prison setting, in line with the peace agreement. In total, the JEP has charged a total of 104 former FARC rebels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s true that De la Espriella\u2019s proposal did not envisage a special tribunal operating for 15 years, as is the case with the JEP, but rather this entire process taking place within the ordinary justice system, where criminal lawyers such as himself play a leading role in helping their clients negotiate a lenient sentence in exchange for information or the surrender of assets. In this sense, it more closely resembles the logic of plea bargains, which are common in the US justice system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any case, it was a far cry from the vision of life imprisonment for former guerrillas that he now claims to advocate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A decade ago, De la Espriella proposed not only including guerrillas and military officials who committed crimes within the transitional justice model. He also argued that it should include those who reinvented themselves during the war under new identities, such as the \u2018Bacrim\u2019 who left the Justice and Peace transitional mechanism in the mid-2000s to become organised crime groups. In his words, \u201cit\u2019s important to include incentives for the Bacrim to reintegrate\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his view, achieving peace involved dismantling the economic structures that perpetuate the conflict and, therefore, \u201cif the general interest is to achieve peace as a way of life, it would not be in line with the principles of equality (\u2026) to exclude any group operating outside the law\u201d. This is why, he wrote, there is a need to \u201cfacilitate demobilisation and reintegration without discrimination\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is curious is that back then De la Espriella appeared to shift the blame for the Bacrim\u2019s decision to rearm onto the government, for having led reintegration processes which, in his view, had failed. In one section, he described them as \u201cthose who, having been members of groups involved in the conflict, found no real mechanisms for reintegration and, as a result, returned to a life of crime\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In another passage, he stated that \u201cthe Colombian State is obliged to adopt measures leading to the dismantling of the illegal armed groups that emerged following the demobilisations carried out under legal frameworks which failed to fulfil the objective of genuine reintegration\u201d. He did not specify which ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The paradox is that the idea of blaming the State for the rearmament of the \u2018bacrim\u2019 is very similar to the argument Petro has used to justify new rounds of political negotiations with FARC dissidents. Contrary to what has been one of the key pillars of his 2026 campaign \u2013 to bring criminal groups to heel \u2013 De la Espriella, the lawyer, appeared in 2015 to advocate negotiating with everyone, including those who had betrayed the disarmament process by returning to crime, or who had failed to comply with the transitional justice conditions of the Justice and Peace mechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\t One of the most heated debates surrounding the peace agreement was the decision to give it constitutional force so that it would not be the hallmark of a single government, but rather a state policy to be implemented across successive administrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This point \u2013 one of the most rejected<\/a> by political sectors opposed to the agreement \u2013 is one that De la Espriella defended most vehemently in his book, published just one year before the referendum in which the \u2018no\u2019 vote won by 54,000 votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe need to enshrine the peace agreement means that its provisions must be clear and binding for all authorities; therefore, a provision is required to mandate this,\u201d he wrote. In his view, \u201clegal certainty\u201d would stem from the agreed terms having a \u201cprevalent and non-derogable nature\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n De la Espriella called \u201cresponsibility for compliance\u201d what the peace agreement later on termed \u201clegal safeguarding\u201d. In his words, \u201cif the agreement complies with the provisions of international law and establishes the peace that underpins the constitutional order, the obligations arising from its observance must be fulfilled in good faith, without any authority being able to invoke any provision to contravene it\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hence, he explained, \u201cthe obligation to comply fully with its contents [which] will be binding for all authorities\u201d and \u201ccannot be amended or supplemented\u201d. This way, he argued, \u201cbroad or contrary interpretations would be avoided which, in this specific case, would be detrimental to the guarantees of legal stability and reintegration without recurrence\u201d, perhaps alluding to changes made by the Constitutional Court to alternative sentences in the transitional \u2018Justice and Peace\u2019 mechanism with the paramilitaries during \u00c1lvaro Uribe\u2019s government, which the new president publicly defended<\/a>. On this point, De la Espriella also goes beyond the peace agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This insistence that \u201cthe State is accountable to society as a whole for complying with the provisions of the Constitution [and] the peace agreement\u201d takes on greater significance now that, just like Iv\u00e1n Duque\u2019s government before him, De la Espriella appears to want to water it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More broadly, in his book De la Espriella presented himself as a defender of international law. He frequently cited the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court, and the rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights or the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as well as less binding opinions \u2013 known as \u2018<\/em>softlaw\u2019 \u2013 such as resolutions of the United Nations Security Council or the UN Committee against Torture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This would not be surprising coming from a criminal lawyer were it not for the fact that a decade later one of his campaign pledges was to withdraw Colombia<\/a> from the United Nations and the Organisation of American States\u2019 Inter-American Human Rights System \u2013 institutions he described<\/a> as \u201cleft-wing political bodies that have served no purpose whatsoever\u201d. His foreign minister-designate, Omar Bula, has also vociferously put forward dozens of conspiracy theories<\/a> about the UN\u2019s alleged \u2018globalism\u2019 and \u2018anti-Western agenda\u2019<\/a>, or the threat to democracy posed by the Inter-American Commission<\/a> on Human Rights, which forms part of the Inter-American System and refers cases to the Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The greatest paradox is that the 2016 peace agreement meets the standards that De la Espriella envisaged in 2015, but he does not recognise those criteria \u2013 that there should be no amnesties for heinous crimes, that the most serious crimes should indeed be investigated, prosecuted and punished, and that sentences may be less severe and non-prison if certain conditions are met \u2013 in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When contacted by telephone and email regarding these contradictions between his positions as president-elect and those set out in his 2015 book, and asked when he had changed his mind on these matters, De la Espriella\u2019s press office did not respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With just one week to go before De la Espriella he takes office, it remains unclear what his government\u2019s policy will be on transitional justice and the implementation of the peace agreement. Whilst his nominee for Minister of Justice, Iv\u00e1n Cancino \u2013 also a criminal lawyer\u2013 nuanced this by saying<\/a> that \u201cit\u2019s not that we want to abolish the JEP\u201d, the new president has made it a punching bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a joint investigation by Justice Info, the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (<\/em>CLIP<\/em><\/a>), and <\/em>La Silla Vac\u00eda<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\nThe president-elect\u2019s \u2018legally viable solutions\u2019 to the conflict<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe sentence does not necessarily have to be served in a prison\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/President-colombie-1200-x-800-px.jpg\")
\u201cTelling the truth [and] publicly asking for forgiveness\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is important to include incentives for the Bacrim to reintegrate\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe provisions of the peace agreement must be clear and binding for all authorities\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
He used to cite them; now he wants to distance himself from them<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Colombia_Election-billboard_@Joaquin-Sarmiento-AFP-540x360.jpg\")
<\/div><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t