Salvatore Mancuso, a feared former paramilitary commander appointed as peace manager by President Gustavo Petro, landed in Colombia this Tuesday after spending 15 years in the United States, where he served a prison sentence for drug trafficking. He returns to his country of origin to also face ordinary and transitional justice, in which he is accused of much more than just drug trafficking: acts of terrorism, conspiracy to commit crimes, murders, torture, kidnappings, massacres, forced relocations, enforced disappearances, Threats, extortion, money laundering and many other crimes. Your freedom on Colombian territory depends not only on your willingness to contribute to the truth about the armed conflict in court and before society, but also on how many legal challenges are resolved. His defense says Mancuso has already served his sentence and should be released while other court cases are resolved. The courts, for their part, must agree on how to solve the thousands of uninvestigated crimes that point to Mancuso. Above all, the former paramilitary commander ended up in a legal labyrinth. He will initially be held in La Picota prison in the country's capital.
“I am aware that my return represents a challenge to the transitional mechanisms of the trial and inter-judicial cooperation,” Mancuso said in a letter published after he landed in Bogotá. But he adds, even if it is being studied by different jurisdictions: “I believe that the models of transitional justice that began to work in Colombia (…) are safe and legitimate mechanisms for the final judicial resolution of the conflict. internally. “Armament”.
Mancuso joined paramilitary groups in the 1990s and demobilized with hundreds of his companions in 2004 to benefit from a special judicial process sponsored by Álvaro Uribe's government. In 2005, the former president managed to pass the so-called Justice and Peace Law, in which the paramilitaries received lower sentences in exchange for the truth they offered victims. Mancuso used this transitional justice system in 2006. But as the free versions of the paramilitaries began to reveal the truth about the war, the former commander became an uncomfortable figure for Uribe and other powerful people: He blamed the former president He was in involved in a murder and a massacre, the military gave him lists to kill civilians, and several companies financed the bloodthirsty paramilitary army.
The Uribe government decided in 2008 to extradite him, along with other former paramilitary leaders, to the United States, saying they had continued to commit crimes in prison. For many human rights defenders, it was more of an attempt by the government to silence them. Mancuso experienced Pablo Escobar's nightmare, a prison in the United States, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison for drug trafficking. North American prosecutors said the paramilitary leader “directed the manufacture and shipment of more than 100,000 kilograms of cocaine to the United States and other locations.”
Remotely, Justice and Peace continued to operate, and Mancuso continued to release its free versions. In 2014, he was convicted in two instances of justice and peace courts in Colombia for more than 2,000 crimes in eight departments of the country. A sentence that would have lasted 40 years in prison under normal justice resulted in just eight years in this special regime. And those eight years, which officially began in 2006 when he joined Justitia et Pax, were spent in prisons in the United States.
Mancuso speaks to authorities upon his arrival in Colombia. Migration Colombia
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Since 2014, the rancher-turned-paramilitary has been subject to further proceedings before the regular judiciary for money laundering, which, according to the public prosecutor's office, he committed after his demobilization in 2004. Even if he was acquitted in this case, it is a matter of justice and peace. There is still more pending against him: he is accused of more than 60,000 crimes. In this transitional justice system, paramilitaries are liable not only for the crimes they committed directly, but also for those for which they would be responsible through the line of command. The two convictions from 2014 only cover about 2,500 of these crimes. That means he has to face 96% of the facts.
In addition to the ordinary judiciary and the special judiciary for paramilitaries, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the special court that emerged from the peace agreements between the government and the FARC guerrillas in 2016, also has a place for Mancuso. In November last year it agreed to take him under its jurisdiction, saying the paramilitary leader was a “hinge” between the paramilitaries and the public forces' high command. Mancuso promised to provide the JEP with the entire truth about how the public forces operated with the help of paramilitary groups in return for legal benefits.
The JEP accepted his nomination after Mancuso spoke for four days before this court from the United States about his alliances with the military, businessmen or politicians. The judges considered that he was “willing to pay tribute to the victims.” However, aware of the legal confusion this represents, the JEP decided that an interjudicial technical table will be necessary between this jurisdiction and the Justice and Peace so that they function as complementary judicial systems with the presence of the Supreme Court and the Attorney General's Office. The first thing that the judiciary must clarify is whether Mancuso can be released: the former paramilitary has argued that he had already served the eight-year sentence imposed on him by Justice and Peace when he was imprisoned in the United States and that he can face the other processes in freedom.
Salvatore Mancuso's legal future appears to be an endless maze, which shouldn't be surprising considering he was one of the most bloodthirsty paramilitary leaders for a decade and a half. But he returns to Colombia with a big asset: President Gustavo Petro, who believes that the confessed criminal is essential to learning the whole truth about the paramilitaries. Mancuso needs to show not only that he has a lot to say, but also how to prove it.
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