BOGOTA, Colombia — BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — On Tuesday, Colombia’s transitional justice tribunal charged ten former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity, alleging the offenses were directed at five Indigenous groups.
During a news briefing, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) stated that, from 1996 to 2016, the accused supervised the torture, killing, and forced displacement of Indigenous leaders, and directed their subordinates to plant landmines on Indigenous lands and devastate ecosystems essential to tribal survival.
“Today we are delivering justice to the most forgotten peoples of a divided Colombia,” said JEP magistrate Catalina Díaz on Tuesday. “These communities have seen their fundamental right to exist undermined.”
Three former members of the FARC’s final secretariat are among those accused of carrying out systematic attacks against tribes inhabiting a remote southeastern Colombian region of rainforest and savanna, where the guerrilla group once maintained firm territorial control.
One of the accused, Julián Gallo, served as a senator for eight years following the rebel group’s peace agreement with the Colombian government, which allocated ten congressional seats to FARC leadership.
Yhon Jairo Figueroa, a leader of the Koreguaje tribe, attended Tuesday’s press conference and expressed gratitude to the JEP for pursuing the case.
“For the first time, the Colombian state acknowledges that armed groups did not merely kill individuals,” he said. “They sought to erase the knowledge, language, and territory of Indigenous peoples.”
The special tribunal was created under the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels to investigate crimes committed by all parties during decades of internal conflict and to assist victims in obtaining reparations and truth.
An independent truth commission, also established by the 2016 peace accord, determined that at least 450,000 people were killed in the conflict and that seven million were displaced from their homes.
The former FARC leaders have thirty days to reply to the charges brought by the JEP.
According to the tribunal’s statutes, suspects who admit the charges and cooperate with the investigation will avoid incarceration; instead, they must provide reparations to victims and take part in truth and reconciliation programs.
Those who reject the charges and are later convicted of war crimes may be sentenced to up to twenty years in prison.
