Colombia said Jimenez violated a peace agreement by continuing to organise cocaine shipments and run a criminal empire from prison.
Jimenez is wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges
[…]
He is the first jailed warlord to lose benefits agreed under a 2024 peace deal which led paramilitary leaders to surrender and demobilise 31,000 of their men in exchange for reduced jail terms and extradition protection.
The Uribe administration has been quite willing to extradite such persons to the US, so the track record suggests that they will do so here. Further since, Jimenez was caught breaking the demobilization agreement, I suspect that the Colombian government will want to make an example of him. Given that one of the things that narcos have wanted to avoid is extradition to the US this situation will give Uribe a chance to send a signal to the other AUC commanders: behave or be sent to the US for trial.=.
The authorities said they had evidence that Carlos Jimenez, also known as Macaco, was continuing to smuggle drugs and run a criminal empire from prison.
He has been transferred to Colombia’s most secure prison, Combita, and will be tried as an ordinary criminal.
Jimenez could also be extradited to the US although no request has been made.
The move means Jimenez loses the benefits given to demobilised paramilitaries, including shorter sentences.
The idea that Jimenez could have been continuing criminal activities in prison is hardly a surprise. Indeed, for anyone familiar with Colombia’s track record on curtailing criminal activity by high profile prisoners, this news will likely elicit nothing more than a yawn.
The interesting part is that Jimenez’s actions are in violation of the demobilization agreement between the government at the paramilitary group known at the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The real question now will be if the Colombia justice system actually succeeds in treating Jimenez like a common criminal, and it will be quite interesting to see if the US seeks his extradition. From there the real question will be if this will dissuade other imprisoned AUC commanders from continuing their criminal activities.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has offered to create a temporary safe haven for peace talks, if left-wing guerrillas free hundreds of hostages.
Mr Uribe said he would then also be willing to release rebel prisoners.
[…]
The Farc has not responded officially but a website which carries rebel statements rejected the proposal.
“There will definitively be no humanitarian exchange with Uribe,” a statement on the Anncol website began.
The FARC would prefer a demilitarized zone in the southwest of Colombia. However, after the disaster that was the Pastrana administration’s (1998-2002) attempt at such a zone, I can’t imagine any Colombian president ceding such a space again anytime soon, and certainly not Alvaro Uribe.
I also have a hard time seeing the FARC negotiating with the Uribe administration given that the FARC consider Uribe linked directly to paramilitary groups. This is problematic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that the last major peace accord (not the last set of talks, but the last major agreement) between the FARC and the government, back during the Betancur administration (1982-1986) led to the creation of a political party, the Patriotic Union (UP). Over the course of less than two decades, right-wing paramilitary groups (linked directly to the AUC that is in talks with the government to demobilize) assassinated upwards of 4,000 members of the UP, in what has been accurately terms a “political genocide.”
As such, given that the Uribe administration has been negotiating with the AUC (and because there have been credible accusations that Uribe worked with paramilitary groups when he was governor of the department of Antioquia in the 1990s), I have a very hard time seeing the FARC being willing to talk to Uribe. Given that there are also serious problems with the AUC’s demobilization (i.e., not all of those demobilized appear to be remaing demobilized), then one would think that distrust would be high.
Just to add another wrinkle to the story, Uribe’s father was killed by the FARC during a kidnapping attempt.
Colombian judges rallied around the country’s Supreme Court on Wednesday as President Alvaro Uribe seeks to bypass its decision to ban former right-wing paramilitaries from running for political office.
The fight between the president and the high court threatens to unravel a peace deal in which 31,000 former paramilitary fighters have turned in their guns in exchange for pardons and the right to hold public positions.
Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office, the Constitutional Court and other legal institutions met on Tuesday to express their support for the Supreme Court.
A spokesman for the high court said a statement was expected on Wednesday from the institutions “backing the court in this argument with the president.”
Last month it decided that demobilized paramilitary fighters must be charged with common crimes like drug trafficking and murder rather than with sedition.
The ruling shook the foundation of the peace deal, which promises that many paramilitaries will face only political charges, which can be pardoned, in connection to their 20-year struggle against left-wing rebels.
Once pardoned, they would be able to run for political office, an avenue that is closed if they have a serious criminal conviction on their records.
If the Supreme Court decision stands, many “paras” have said they will stop cooperating with investigators and halt the turnover of their illegally acquired wealth.
I would note that it is unclear as to whether they are, in fact, being required to turn over their ill-gotten gains.
This situation is very interesting and has multiple components, not the least of which being a test of the institutional strength of the judicial branch vis-a-vis the executive. There is also the very real issue of the appropriate manner for treating the paramilitaries. While by the numbers it would seem that there has been a substantial demobilization, which is quite positive given that the paras are very much responsible for the lion’s share of the violence in the last decade plus, the problem is that it seems that many of them are not staying demobilized.
Uribe appears headed to the Congress to seek a legislative remedy. One would think that he would have a very good chance of getting it, given his support in the legislature. On the other hand, he has suffered in the eyes of public opinion (although he is still around 66% approval) and one wonders if that will affect some of that legislative support, given that it rests on a coalition of smaller parties, rather than on one large one tied directly to the President. Uribe ran as an independent affiliated with parties who ran in the congressional elections rather than actually joining a party himself.
The issue also has some short-term importance, given that:
Several former militia fighters say they plan to run in October provincial elections, sparking concern that paramilitaries may not only get away with the crimes they committed, but might end up running parts of the country.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe tried to salvage his peace deal with right-wing paramilitaries on Sunday, offering a bill that would allow demobilized militia fighters to run for public office.
The measure is meant to stop the Supreme Court from derailing an accord hailed by the conservative leader as the biggest step toward ending Colombia’s long guerrilla war.
More than 31,000 paramilitaries have turned in their guns over the last three years in a deal promising them reduced jail sentences for crimes ranging from torture to massacre.
The pact was based on the idea that former “paras” would be charged not with common crimes but with sedition, as demobilized left-wing guerrillas have been in the past. This would help them avoid cocaine-smuggling charges and protect their long-held dream of running for public office.
But because the paramilitaries never tried to overthrow the government, and even worked with sectors of the army in their common fight against leftist guerrillas, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that sedition does not apply.
The president over the weekend called it a double standard to allow former fighters with the M19 rebel group to serve in Congress, as some members of the disbanded guerrilla army have done, while barring the paramilitaries from doing the same.
Uribe, who denies accusations that he sympathizes with the paramilitary cause, said the court was “ideologically biased” and proposed a law to guarantee political rights to demobilized paramilitaries who are not directly guilty of atrocities.
This is a difficult and tricky situation. If one is an absolutist on the question of the application of justice, it is difficult to see granting amnesty to any of the various violent actors in Colombia, whether we are talking the paras or the guerrillas. On the other hand, the paras have been far more responsible for massacres and displacement in the last two decades and there is ample evidence of unofficial complicity on part of the military.
There is little doubt that the Colombian Supreme Court has a point: guerrillas picked up arms to foment political change, while the paras picked up arms to exact revenge and to protect land and assets (mostly drug land). By the same token, the guerrillas (specifically the FARC) have, since the early 1980s, been more than willing to utilize the drug industry to fund their activities (kidnapping as well).
As such, neither can claim ideological or political purity. And any reconciliation is going to be messy and unsatisfying in the sense of achieving justice (if, by justice, we include a notion of punishment for past crimes committed). There is also the general issue of whether any group that takes up arms against it own state or citizens should ever be rewarded in any capacity.
Of course, if a way cannot be found to get these actors to lay down their arms the alternative is simply continued violence. It is clear that military defeat/the use of force is not going to solve the problem of political violence in Colombia. If we trace the history of the current conflict based simply of the official founding of key belligerents, the FARC and ELN were both founded in the mid-1960s (hence the frequent formulation in the press of a “four decade civil war” and so forth). However, one can easily trace back the precursor of the FARC to fighting during La Violencia (1948-1958). The paramilitaries, in their current form, can be traced back to the early 1980s (although a law allowing civilian “self defense” groups was issued by presidential decree in 1965 and ratified by the Congress in 1968, although it was repealed in 1989, to be replaced by a different iteration in 1994). At any rate, the idea that brute force is going to solve this problem, or that it can be done with perfect justice, is nothing short of a pipe dream (if I may be allowed to deployed said cliche in this context).
(Just some quick thoughts on a complex situation that deserves greater treatment, but I will leave here for the moment).
A jury on Thursday rejected claims that Alabama-based Drummond coal was to blame for the killing of three union leaders in Colombia, a defeat for labor in a test of whether companies can be held responsible in U.S. courtrooms for their conduct overseas.
Jurors sided with Drummond and the head of its Colombian operations, Augusto Jimenez, in ruling against a lawsuit filed by relatives and the union of the dead men, killed by paramilitary gunmen six years ago.
The main issue, as I understand it, is that Drummond officials were accused of hiring paramilitary hitmen to take out union leaders. Sadly, the basic accusation is one that is quite possible in the Colombian context.
The verdict in the civil trial means the union and families of three slain Colombian labor leaders failed to convince the jury that Birmingham-based coal mine operator Drummond substantially helped right-wing death squads kill the men who worked at its South American mine.
The families and union claimed Drummond supplied the gangs with fuel, vehicles and a safe haven inside its 23,000-acre mine in the remote grasslands of northern Colombia.
Drummond argued the deaths were just an unfortunate three among thousands of others in a country with warring factions, lawless drug traffickers, roaring poverty and not enough police and soldiers to patrol vast stretches of isolated mountains, savanna and wilderness
The trial itself was a big deal in the sense that its outcome could have had consequences well outside the case itself:
The trial, which resurrected an obscure 218-year-old law that holds Americans liable for their overseas conduct, was a centerpiece for an international human rights community that increasingly is using the statute to attack the behavior of big global corporations. The United Steelworkers and the International Labor Rights Fund each supplied lawyers and thousands of hours of work to the five-year-old suit.
Colombia’s peace process with far-right paramilitaries has plunged into a new crisis after warlords vowed to stop cooperating with prosecutors investigating their role in some of the country’s worst massacres.
The decision was made to protest the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that a demobilized paramilitary fighter in Antioquia state is not entitled to special benefits as a former subversive.
The reversal is the latest blow to a fragile 2024 peace accord that has led some 31,000 right-wing fighters to disarm but has been so far unable to provide reparations to their victims or wrest major confessions from some 60 jailed paramilitary warlords.
“With this decision the reconstruction of the historical truth, the handing over of mass graves and other legal obligations assumed under the peace pact are frozen,” said Antonio Lopez, a spokesman for the jailed paramilitary bosses. “We can’t allow our fighters to be treated like common criminals.”
President Alvaro Uribe said Tuesday he disagreed with the court’s ruling even as his ministers pledged to put the peace process back on track.
“I’ve repeated several times in the past five years of government: If the guerrillas are recognized as subversives, the same criteria should be applied to the paramilitaries,” Uribe said.
The issue at hand is whether demilitarized paramilitary members and demilitarized guerrillas should be treated the same under the law and through the peace process:
On July 11, the Supreme Court quietly upheld a lower court ruling denying Orlando Cesar Caballero, a member of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, benefits such as a maximum eight-year jail sentence in exchange for renouncing violence and confessing crimes to special prosecutors.
“To accept that instead of criminal conspiracy, paramilitary members committed treason not only supposes they acted with altruistic aims for the collective good, but also flaunts the rights of victims and society to obtain justice and truth,” the court said.
Upon a first reading I say that I think he makes a number of very valid points. Of the most salient is the notion that how this situation is handled will have implications for any future negotiations with the FARC and ELN mean that the government needs to carefully consider how to proceed.
International arrest warrants have been issued for three Israeli men wanted in Colombia in connection with the alleged training of paramilitary fighters.
Yair Klein, Melnik Ferry and Tzedaka Abraham are accused of giving military training in the 1990s to landowners’ and drug-traffickers’ private armies.
Prosecutors say those trained went on to carry out some of the country’s most notorious political assassinations.
Some of the fighters went on to form a right-wing paramilitary group, the AUC.
Prosecutors have also accused the three men of working for the then powerful Medellin drugs cartel to create a personal army for its leader, Pablo Escobar.
An interesting mirror image of the allegations against the three IRA members who were charged with aiding the FARC.
