This report demonstrates once again that the Extrajudicial Executions and Enforced Disappearances were a systematic state policy that disproves the bad apples thesis.
March 16, 2022, #CuentenConmigo, #CountOnMe, @Colectivo_ofb
This Thursday, in Villavicencio, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace received a report from the Socio-legal Collective Orlando Fals Borda-Colectivo OFB, the Lawyers Collective José Alvear Restrepo-CAJAR, the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace-CIJYP and the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners-CSPP, that demonstrates the alleged responsibility of the 4th, 7th and 12th Brigades of the 4th Division and the 2nd and 7th Brigades of the Joint Task Force Omega-FUTCO Joint Task Force, military units that had the same modus operandi as the 21st Pantano Vargas Battalion in the crimes of Forced Disappearances and Extrajudicial Executions committed in the departments of Meta and Guaviare. All these human rights violations were perpetrated between 2003 and 2008.
This analysis shows the patterns of macro-criminality in Meta, as the department with the second highest number of “false positive” cases in the country, as indicated by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in its decision of February 12, 2021, in which it makes public the internal prioritization of Case 003, called “murders and forced disappearances presented as combat casualties by agents of the State”.
The report analyzes the prioritization and selection criteria that allow for more information regarding the attribution of responsibilities of State agents linked to military units of the National Army, other than the Infantry Battalion No. 21 Pantano de Vargas, the only military unit in the department of Meta that has so far been investigated by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace for the alleged responsibility of its members in these serious crimes.
The document presents 19 illustrative cases that group 30 victims of alleged extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances committed by Brigades 4, 7 and 12 of the Fourth Division and Brigades 2 and 7 of the Joint Task Force Omega-FUTCO.
The patterns of macro-criminality that are evident in these cases are:
1)militarization of the territory,
2)stigmatization of the civilian population,
3) joint action between tactical units and paramilitary groups,
4)instigation to the commission or tolerance of the practice through pressure for results,
5)economic or other incentives for the presentation of results,
6) lack of control over subordinates,
7) lack of timely measures in the face of knowledge of the practice of extrajudicial executions,
8) participation of military units with special characteristics,
9) massiveness of the events that constitute the practice,
10) transfer of the practice between military units regardless of their hierarchy, and
11) high number of events in which the persons were buried as unidentified.
This, together with other reports that have been submitted to the Integral Peace System, show that the practice of forced disappearances and murders presented as combat casualties by State agents in the Eastern Plains region, as well as throughout the national territory, are not isolated acts committed by certain military personnel or military units, Rather, it is a systematic and generalized practice whose responsibility is attributable to different military units, so that the thesis of bad apples or entrenched structures in the National Army for the commission of the crimes is not admissible, since the vast majority of military units were involved in the crimes investigated in the framework of macro case 003.
For César Santoyo, spokesman for the OFB Collective, “with this new report we demonstrate the macro-criminality and systematicity with which State agents carried out certain crimes and we demand that the JEP study State criminality and that it become a case in itself, not only for the Eastern Plains, but for the rest of the country”.
In accordance with the above, this report requests the SJP:
1) Prioritize and investigate the following military units for reporting the highest number of victims documented in the reports submitted: (I) Fourth Division: Seventh Brigade; Mobile Brigade No.12; Mobile Brigade No. 4 and Jungle Infantry Battalion No.19 General José Joaquín París Ricaurte and (II) FUTCO: FUDRA; Mobile Brigade No. 7 and Mobile Brigade No. 6.
2) Call for voluntary testimonies from the heads of the Military Units of the departments of Meta and Guaviare, many of whom are mentioned in the document.
3) Order the production of affidavits from former paramilitaries who have testified in Justice and Peace regarding the joint work they carried out with these military units.
4) That the agencies of the Integral Peace System and the other institutions in charge of the search, identification and dignified surrender of persons coordinate to determine the whereabouts of the disappeared, guaranteeing the rights of their families to access to justice, since in several of the cases presented to the JEP, the persons are still missing.
