Colombia Sentences High Military Official in Human Rights Case

 
In July 1997, a paramilitary group occupied the town of Mapiripán in the department of Meta, southeast of Bogotá. In the five days that the paramilitaries held the town, 30 people were killed. The event became known in the media as the "massacre of Mapiripán."

The area's military leaders at the time were General Jaime Uscátegui and Colonel Hernán Orozco, commanders of the VII and II Army Brigades, respectively. Later it was revealed that Colonel Orozco had known about the paramilitary presence in the days before the massacre and had sent a communiqué to General Uscátegui recommending "a rapid surprise operation in Mapiripán." A few days later, Judge Leonardo Iván Cortés sent his own urgent messages to the armed forces describing the gruesome scene in the town. "Every night they kill groups of five or six defenseless people," he wrote. "They are massacred in the most cruel and monstrous fashion after being tortured first. The cries of these humble people can be heard begging for mercy and pleading for help."

General Uscátegui ignored the warnings. As a result, 30 people were murdered and dozens of others fled their homes, joining the tide of displaced persons within Colombia.

In the investigation which followed, General Uscátegui alleged that the messages were garbled and that confusion existed as to who was the actual military leader in the area. A military court sentenced him to 40 months in jail for his complicity in the massacre, citing his failure to react to the warnings he had received.

José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, pointed out that the 40-month sentence "amounts to a bit more than one month for every Colombian killed in Mapiripán." In statements to the press, he argued that the sentence "is too light to deter actions of this type in the future and does not correspond to the gravity of the crimes in question."

For the New York Times, in contrast, the case is an example of President Andrés Pastrana's efforts to show that he is taking a hard line against the paramilitaries and their possible links to the military. Paramilitary forces are held responsible for numerous massacres across Colombia.

In an editorial, the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo predicted that the case will have "an enormous political reach, both because of the historical moment in which it occurred and the impact it will have in Colombia and other nations that look down on us because of our deplorable human rights record, which is in fact much worse among the guerrillas and self-defense forces." Semana magazine reported that opinion in Colombia is divided between "the left, which celebrates what it considers to be a historic milestone in the defense of human rights, and the outraged right, which deplores it as just another excess of the 'NGO syndrome.'"

Uscátegui's sentence may indeed be light given the facts of the case, but his trial marks the first time that a military court has punished a high-level official for a crime related to human rights violations in Colombia. The case is also significant for demonstrating the successful impact of international pressure to prosecute human rights abuses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/14/world/14COLO.html
www.hrw.org