In reference to the recent extradition of 14 paramilitary chiefs, the US Ambassador in Colombia, William Brownfield, recently affirmed that “with this extradition, Colombia and the United States will become better countries,” [1] basing this on the harmonious relationship between the two countries and alleging that all procedures established in Colombian law had been respected, that information would be shared with Colombian authorities, and that the “legal system in the United States also recognizes the right of the victims to ask for compensation y repayment in a legal process […].” [2]

Nonetheless, this decision has severely harmed the victims and the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes demanded the United States government “to return the paramilitary chiefs to the Colombian authorities so they may be processed by the ordinary justice system and not under the framework of the Law of Justice and Peace, since this framework benefits the victimizers and not the victims, since they have not told all of the truth, have not made comprehensive reparations to the victims, and have not dismantled their criminal structures.” [3]

In turn, the Office in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights emphatically remembered that “[…] according to Colombian law, the reasons claimed by the President of the Republic to proceed with the previously-suspended extraditions are also grounds for their removal from the application of the ‘Law of Justice and Peace’ and for the loss of the benefits established therein.” [4] Moreover, the Inter-American Commission observed that the extradition of the paramilitary chiefs “affects the Colombian State’s obligation to guarantee victims’ rights to truth, justice, and reparations for the crimes committed by the paramilitary groups.” [5]

While Colombia sets out on the long march to someday recover a shred of truth taken with the primary “witnesses of para-politics,” as Rafael Pardo appropriately called them, [6] within the framework of these sudden presidential decisions, we also wonder about other persons who -with more than enough grounds and under the same assumptions serving as the basis for these extraditions- are also “eligible” for this practice.

For instance, we refer to US citizens, who have committed crimes in Colombia, yet enjoy complete freedom due to agreements reached with the US justice system or to immunity agreements, which provide them with immunity -it is worth repeating- even from the laws of their own country, as is the case of ROBERT FISHER, STEVEN G. WARSHAW, CARL H. LINDNER, DURK I. JAGER, JEFFREY D. BENJAMIN, MORTEN ARNTZEN, RODERICK HILLS, CYRUS F. FREIDHEIM and ROBERT OLSON, [7] all of whom have been board members of Chiquita Brands, which for years made payments to paramilitary structures and participated in the logistics to enter arms that these groups used to massacre, torture, disappear, and forcibly displace thousands of peasants in Uraba. [8]

We also refer to members of Plan Colombia’s contracted mission operating in Tolemaida that distributed a video in October 2004, which showed underage girls from Melgar who were subjected to sexual abuses. [9] Specifically, we refer to “Michel J. Coen, an active-duty US army sergeant, and César Ruiz, a retired US army military member, providing security in Tolemaida,” [10] who sexually abused a twelve-year-old Colombian girl at the Air Force’s Combat Air Command No. 4 (CACOM 4) in Melgar on August 26, 2007. [11]

Likewise, we refer to US citizens Alan Norman Tanquary and José Hernández, firing range instructors at the Army National Training Center in Tolemaida who belonged to the Seventh Group of the US Army Special Forces. In May 2005, they were arrested on the road connecting the departments of Tolima and Cundinamarca as they were trafficking more than 30,000 projectiles meant for paramilitary groups. The Attorney General’s Office requested the lifting of immunity, however it was not granted. [12]

And we also refer to the members of the Colombian public force that have trafficked in narcotics or have favored the processing of these illicit substances through the trafficking of the chemical precursors. We speak of members of the special anti-kidnapping unit Gaula, which confiscated 3,000 kilos of cocaine in the city of Barranquilla in 2002 and, in exchange for 1,800 million pesos, returned it to the drug traffickers. [13]

We speak of Army Major Gil Gonzalo Vivero Amador, who -along with Rubén Oswaldo Ceballos Burbano, another a member of the military- organized the transport of cocaine base from Puerto Caicedo, Putumayo, to Pitalito, Huila, in June 2003, while using equip and logistics from the Domingo Rico Battalion stationed in Villa Garzón, one of Plan Colombia’s emblematic bases “in the fight against drug trafficking.” These military members were convicted for the crime of drug trafficking by the Nariño District Court in August 2007. [14]

We speak of Army Colonel Miguel Ángel Sierra Santos and Army Major Javier Alberto Carreño Vargas, who the Procurator General’s Office filed charges against due to their alleged collaboration with a paramilitary group operating in the department of Caquetá in 2003 by allowing the entrance of fuel and cement, components used to process narcotics and psychoactive substances. [15]

And we speak of retired General Pauselino Latorre, who was detained by order of the Attorney General’s Office -along with 21 other persons including his nephew former prosecutor Leobardo Latorre- for trafficking drugs to the United. [16] During his long military career, retired General Latorre held such positions as chief of army intelligence, chief of the Army’s Third Division in Cali, commander of the 17th Brigade based in Carepa (Antioquia), and was a graduate of the School of the Americas based in Fort Benning, Georgia, EEUU, among other important positions. [17] According to an investigator of the case, “[i]t was established that [Latorre] served to launder more than 2 thousand million pesos that resulted from the drug trafficking business.” [18]

What happens with all of them? Are Colombia and the United States not interested in bringing US citizens to trial that have committed the very crimes for which they are supposed to be supporting Colombian security agencies and which justify their presence and the very existence of Plan Colombia? Is Colombia not interested in domestically processing US citizens who are encouraged by their diplomatic immunity to rape girls in their very military bases (and not satisfied with that also subjecting them to public humiliation)? Is the US government not interested in processing Colombian military and police members that ignore their responsibilities and instead logistically support, collude, and sustain drug-trafficking paramilitary forces in the processing, trafficking, and commercialization of cocaine? Is the Colombian government not interested in knowing the truth concerning the board members of the banana company that financed the crimes against humanity committed by paramilitaries?

How is it Colombia and the United States will become better countries when there is a clear imbalance in the obligation of collaborating with the Colombian justice system in cases involving sexual assault and the rights of girls, the very trafficking of narcotics, or support to paramilitary structures? How do they become better countries when the indignation of drug trafficking falls on para-State structures, but never on the State structures that participate and direct the commission of said crime? How do they become better countries by selectively applying the concept of extradition in clear detriment to the inalienable right to truth of the victims of crimes against humanity? How do they become better countries when debate centers on the word reparation, yet devoids it of any meaning?

Reparation is not an economic compensation, since a daughter that has been disappeared, a father murdered, a people devastated and vanquished, a union leader, an indigenous person or Afro-descendent, a journalist, human rights defender, do not have a price in either pesos or dollars.

Reparation means knowing the truth about what happened: finding the remains of those disappeared, knowing who are the material and intellectual authors of the murder, returning the stolen land in dignified and secure conditions, guaranteeing that the violations are not going to happen again or that other Colombians will never again be subjected to disgrace and impunity.

Reparation is not made through a bureaucratic fund for the distribution of goods, or through the promise that Colombians who subsist on less than one dollar a day may access this reparation through lawsuits filed directly in the United States. Reparation means treating the victims with respect, dignifying their pain, giving the memory a social connotation and not a private shame. Reparation means embracing the truth, without being afraid of it.

As opposed to statements made by US ambassador Brownfield, these latest extraditions of Colombians to the United States will not improve either of the countries or facilitate the comprehensive reparation of the victims.

Endnotes

 

Notas