Individual hearing to contribute to the truth about Salvatore Mancuso of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, November 17, 2023.JEP
Former paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso was admitted this Friday to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the transitional justice system created as part of the peace agreements with the defunct FARC to deal with serious cases of the most widespread criminal behavior during the conflict to pursue. armed. “You could see a person with a different attitude than what Colombians saw at the Congress of the Republic in 2004.” [Está] “We are ready to honor the victims, recognize their freedom of choice and offer them the full truth,” said Judge Heydi Patricia Baldosea, who is responsible for reading the decision.
The JEP believes that the former paramilitary leader, who followed the hearing via video call from the United States, demonstrated his ability to provide privileged and novel information. “It was obvious that he had knowledge of various repertoires of violence used together with leading representatives of the public authority,” the court said. It was also recognized that he was aware of his responsibilities and had shown his willingness to take part in reparation measures. “There was full recognition of the repertoire of violence and stigma suffered by farming communities, political leaders, ethnic peoples, women and LGBTI people,” the JEP stressed.
The court also reported that it would admit Mancuso as a “subject functionally and materially integrated into public authority.” Baldosea stated that it was “the criminal alliance with high-ranking public officials” that allowed him to find refuge in illegality.
Mancuso, a landowner from Montería (Córdoba) turned warlord, is accused of masterminding 139 massacres in which 800 people were murdered. In May, after being imprisoned in the United States, he investigated links between the paramilitaries and the state as part of his strategy to take advantage of the judicial benefits of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). “Uribe disabled the security system and we killed him,” he commented, referring to the assassination of the then mayor of El Roble, Eudaldo Díaz, in 2003. “They gave us lists and then we went and hit them Houses and killing them because they told us they were guerrillas,” he said of his role as leader of a group made up of police and army personnel.
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