THE INTERNATIONAL ETHICS COMMISSION OBJECTS THE EXTRADITION OF PARAMILITARIES

Received in English from NGOS Coordinator in Colombia

Ethics Communication 5


We, members of the International Ethics Commission of the Truth in Colombia, international organizations of human rights, intellectual and groups and movements for the affirmation of the rights to the memory, truth and to the justice, OBJECT the DECISION OF EXTRADICCION adopted by the Government of the President ALVARO URIBE VELEZ, to send to the United States, by the crime of "drug trafficking", 13 Paramilitary commanders responsible for perpetrating Crimes of Lese Humanity in Colombia.  
 
The transfer of the paramilitary commanders SALVATORE MANCUSO GÓMEZ, ALIAS 'SANTANDER LOZADA'; RODRIGO TOVAR PUPO, ALIAS 'JORGE 40'; DIEGO FERNANDO MURILLO BEJARANO, ALIAS 'DON BERNA'; FRANCISCO JAVIER ZULUAGA LINDO, ALIAS 'GORDO LINDO'; DIEGO ALBERTO RUIZ ARROYAVE; GUILLERMO PÉREZ ALZATE, ALIAS 'PABLO SEVILLANO'; RAMIRO VANOY, ALIAS 'CUCO VANOY'; JUAN CARLOS SIERRA, ALIAS 'EL TUSO'; MARTÍN PEÑARANDA, ALIAS 'EL BURRO'; EDWIN MAURICIO GÓMEZ LARA; HERNÁN GIRALDO SERNA, ALIAS 'EL PATRÓN'; NODIER GIRALDO GIRALDO; EDUARDO ENRIQUE VENGOECHEA, is an offense to the ethics conscience of the humanity.  With this decision is closed the possibility of the exercise of justice by the victims of the Crimes of Lese Humanity committed by the paramilitary structures under the command of these 13 commanders, some of which in their partial confessions, in the courts, and in the media, have affirm their participation in the development of this criminal strategy with the consent of the Military Forces and the support of Economic and political sectors.  
 

1. Through these extraditions a new mechanism of impunity is supplied, cause the crimes under which they will be judged do not correspond to the crimes of Lese Humanity but to those of drug trafficking, hiding and blurring their responsibility in the violations of the human rights and those of the Colombian State.
   

1. The extradition shows the inefficiency of the Law 975 "For the Justice and For the Peace" to enable the recognition of the rights of the victims and verifies that these crimes in the Internal Right must have been courts by the ordinary justice based on a penal code according to the international law.
   

1. The extradition has been understood as the exit to the breach of the Law 975 by the paramilitary, while in the meantime they continued the perpetration of the crimes, or by refusing to speak the truth, decision that favors the paramilitary against the rights of the victims.
   

1. The drugs traffic is an international crime but is not comparable to the commission of systematic crimes, with a default plan and an ethically unsustainable pretension that itself express out-of-court executions, forced disappearance of people, torture and cruel treats, threats of death, the exile, the forced displacement, the political extermination, the illegal appropriation of lands and other committed crimes by these structures during the last 40 years in Colombia.
   

1. The Extradition of these Paramilitary commanders, favors the impunity of the committed crimes, and distances the possibilities and longings for peace. The absence of Justice in Colombia, in the context of the armed and social conflict, sends a message of continuity of the crimes under the protection of the impunity, that supposes that all the ways and methods of repression can be used against the population and can be repeated again and again.
   

1. The U.S. judicial system will not guarantee the judgment of the Crimes of Lese Humanity committed by these paramilitary commanders, because this is designed on the base of the politics of agreement and draft agreement, foresees that if this type of criminals supply prominent information related to its illegal activities of drug trafficking, can be conferred to them punitive benefits that will be translated in the payment of minimum grief for non comparable with the Committed crimes. Worse still, they can arrive at the witnesses protection mechanisms request, in which they can get the change of their identity and with it denying, for future generations, the possibility of the exercise of the Truth and the Justice.
   

1. By the previous thing, the decision of the Colombian Government to Extradite these 13 paramilitary commanders, added to the already extradited, "Macaco", conducts to a new violation of the rights of the victims.  Leaving in a legal meaningless Colombian legislation. They have remained without effect the orders of capture, the callings to judgment, and the prison sentences that has hurled the ordinary justice against these paramilitary leaders.
   

1. The Extradition becomes a mechanism of impunity that will avoid or will do more difficult the access for the victims and its relatives to instances of International Justice as the case of the International Penal Cut – CPI.
   

1. Colombian Government argues that the decision to extradite the 13 paramilitary commanders is based on that they continued their criminal actions, refused to speak the truth and to deliver the goods obtained through the committed crimes. Before ordering the extradition, the correct procedure should have been the loss of the benefit of the law 975 and the transfer of the investigations to the ordinary justice, continuing with the orders of capture, callings to judgment and prison sentences hurled by the competent authorities before the enforcement of the law  of Justice and Peace, just as have indicated by the General Proxy of the Nation and the Office of the High Commissioned of United Nations for the Human Rights in Colombia.
   

 

1. The decision of the extradition, is becoming a new mechanism of political and legal impunity that assures the absence of full clarification and the individualization of the makers, accomplices or economic, military, and political beneficiaries, some of which are being investigated for the Supreme Court of Justice and in such sense, does not attend to the recommendations given by the Office of the High Commissioned of United Nations for Human rights and those of the Commission and Pan-american Cut of Human Rights. This decision of extradition is ethically objectionable, therefore goes in the wrong way of the rights of the victims and of the possibilities of a real democracy in Colombia, before the serious situation of paramilitarización that permeates the Colombian government, the economic, political, and social life of the country.
   

1. What will happen now with almost 15 thousand disappeared people in Colombia?  What will happen with more than 3 thousand common graves located in different places of the country, where these paramilitary leaders acted?  What will happen now with almost 8 million appropriate hectares in an illegal way in development of their crimes?  What will happen now with the truth on the links between politicians and paramilitary groups, businessmen, judicial, civil authorities and the police?  What will happen now with the investigations of the called “para-política” in departments like Antioquia?  What will happen now with the rights of the victims of these crimes? Why it was not acted in Right and was removed of the framework of the Law 975 the 13 paramilitary commanders to pass them to the Ordinary Justice?  Why is not acted in favor of the victims of the crimes of Lese Humanity?  Why the District attorney's Office did not defend the possibility that the rights of truth, to Justice and to Integral Repair could be favored?
   

The members of the Ethics Commission of the Truth in Crimes of Lese Humanity reiterate our solidarity with the victims and organizations belonging to the State Crimes Victims Movement in Colombia, and we call to the community of Human Rights in the world to support the initiatives of this social expression stigmatized by the Colombian Government
 
The initiative of the Ethics Commission of the Truth in Crimes of Lese Humanity in Colombia, today more than ever takes force before the political development of new mechanisms of impunity, because the political decision of the government of Colombia is to hide the truth, to distort the reality to its own favor and of the killers, and to transfer to the victims and the sectors of opposition the responsibility for the impunity, the absence of progress and of peace.  
 
Signatures
 
People from the Ethics Commission of truth
 
Mirta Baravalle, de las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo – Línea Fundadora – Argentina;

Enrique Nuñez Aranda,  de la Comisión Ética contra la Tortura en Chile / Agrupación de Ex presos y Ex presas Políticos de Chile;

Lorenzo Lonkon, Werken Mapuche. Pueblo indígena Mapuche de Chile y Argentina.

Libertad Sánchez, Asociación por la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, Mérida, España.

P. Tonio Dell'Olio, Associazioni, Nomi e Numeri Contro le Mafie -  LIBERA, Italia.

Carlos  Fazio, México. Profesor de la UNAM y analista.

Rainer Huhle, centro de Derechos Humanos de Nuremberg, Alemania

Stephen Nathan Haymes, Ph.D. de la University DePaul, Chicago, EEUU;

Alberto Giráldez, Comunidad Cristiana de Santo Tomás de Aquino. Madrid, España;

Rick Ufford-Chase. Director Ejecutivo, Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. Moderador de la 216 Asemblea General, Presbyterian Church, USA

Charity Ryerson y Liz Deligio, del Movimiento por el cierre de la Escuela de las Américas - SOA Watch, EEUU;

Movimiento de los Trabajadores Sin Tierra, MST Brasil.

Federación Democrática Internacional de Mujeres – FDIM – Oficina Regional para América Latina y el Caribe - Cuba.

France Amérique-Latine, París Francia

Francois Houtart, sacerdote, gestor Foro Social Mundial, director del Cetri; Bélgica.

Bernardine Dohrn, jurista de la Universidad Northwestern de Chicago; EEUU.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel Premio Nóbel, miembro de SERPAJ; Argentina.

Miguel Álvarez Gándara, Asociación Serapaz – Servicios y Asesoría para la Paz -  México;












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