Sitting in front of several ex-kidnapped victims and their relatives in an auditorium in Bogotá, Rodrigo Londono o ‘Timochenko’ accepted responsibility for these acts, accompanied by six other high-ranking FARC commanders charged by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP)born of the agreement that put an end to that guerrilla.
On behalf of the 13,000 combatants who signed the peace agreement in 2016, the former rebel acknowledged “individual and collective responsibility in the face of one of the most heinous crimes committed” by that Marxist organization.
They were “the result of a policy that led to crimes against humanity and war crimes,” said the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) at the time of his disarmament.
Former guerrilla chiefs Pablo Catatumbo, Julián Gallo, Pastor Alape, Milton Toncel, Rodrigo Granda and Jaime Alberto Parra are also taking part in the hearings, which will last until Thursday.
The JEP charged them with more than 21,000 kidnappings and other crimes such as torture committed between 1990 and 2016.
Politicians and soldiers who were kidnapped to force exchanges for imprisoned rebels heard the confession and objected to what they consider a “debt to contribute to the truth” by the perpetrators.
Óscar Tulio Lizcano, kidnapped in 2000 when he was a conservative congressman, demanded that his “jailers” clarify the whereabouts of the disappeared hostages.
“Let them tell us the truth. We have forgiven, but that does not mean that there is no justice, we want the truth,” claimed the 75-year-old former parliamentarian, who escaped from his captors in 2008.
“These crimes were the product of a policy adopted by the secretariat [cúpula] of the FARC-EP” and “committed directly by their subordinates,” said Judge Julieta Lemaitre, who presided over the session.
According to the peace agreement, the former guerrillas must repair those affected and tell the truth to avoid jail.
The court will take at least three months to impose sanctions on the accused. If they consider their confessions insufficient, they could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
In May, a score of retired soldiers, including a general, acknowledged their participation in the murder of more than a hundred civilians to pass them off as guerrillas killed in combat on the border with Venezuela.
The court estimates that there were at least 6,400 victims of this practice, known as the ‘false positives‘, which together with the kidnapping martyred Colombia in the conflict of more than six decades.
Source: Ambito
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