By means of a macro sentence known on Tuesday, March 28, a judge of the Court of Justice and Peace sentenced 25 former members of the Pivijay front of the Northern Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) who committed crimes against humanity between 1999 and 2000.
According to the ruling handed down by magistrate Gustavo Roa Avendaño, the ex-paramilitaries were found responsible for 135 acts among which, due to their great impact within the armed conflict, the massive displacement in the Santa Rita corregimiento, in the Remolino municipality, on October 1999. A month earlier, an incursion by that paramilitary group arrived in that area and murdered Margarita Cabarcas Gutiérrez and Andrés Avelino Pertúz, whom they accused of being “guerrillas”.
Another fact that was taken into account by Justice and Peace was the massacre and displacement of Nueva Venecia, perpetrated on November 22, 2000 by nearly 70 men who arrived in six boats to that village located in the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta; as well as the Trojas de Cataca massacre —which occurred on February 10, 2000 by 50 paramilitaries from the Northern Bloc, being the first massacre committed in Ciénaga Grande—, and the Guáimaro massacre, on May 18 of the same year. .
This last act, like the El Tapón massacre, were those that left the largest number of victims in Bolívar, only after those perpetrated in El Salado —February 16, 2000— and Macayepo —October 14, 2000—, both regions located in Carmen de Bolívar.
In this sense, the court determined the main and accessory alternative penalties of a maximum of eight years in prison. According to this section, the sentences address the requests for comprehensive reparation of at least eight thousand victims, direct and indirect, of crimes against humanity such as forced displacement, forced disappearance and homicide.
The reading of the sentence was carried out in a public hearing that began in February 2023 and, according to the Ministry of Justice, advances in the section on compensation measures for accredited victims “exhausting to date the patterns of homicide and advances in the pattern of forced displacement.” In that order, there are about 1,300 pages that have been communicated to those who suffered damages in the events mentioned and to their relatives and close friends.
It is worth mentioning that these cases are included in the investigations corresponding to macro case 08 of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), called ‘crimes committed by public forces, State agents in association with paramilitary groups or civilian third parties in the armed conflict’ .
In this regard, the court that was created after the signing of the Final Peace Agreement with the extinct FARC pointed out that between 2000 and 2009 51% of all violent actions were committed by the actors mentioned in the macro case. Similarly, the investigations will focus not only on massacres, but also on homicides, torture, threats, forced displacement, arbitrary detentions, and cases of sexual or gender-based violence.
Likewise, the preliminary judicial verification process detailed that the crimes attributed to the public force are distributed as follows: 8,345 homicides, 2,904 acts of forced displacement, 1,638 acts of threats, 1,249 of torture and 1,136 forced disappearances. In that order, the special jurisdiction indicates that 15,710 people were victims of crimes attributed to State agents.
“The Great Magdalena —Cesar-Guajira-Magdalena—; the Montes de María; the Ariari-Guayabero-Guaviare, Caguan and Florencia; Antioquia and Magdalena Medio are the five preliminarily prioritized areas”, they indicated in the JEP. with Infobae