The Colombian Attorney General’s Office has rejected the request made by the government of Gustavo Petro to suspend the arrest warrants for several former paramilitary leaders of the Clan del Golfo or Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada.
«From the legal-criminal point of view, which is the one that binds the Attorney General’s Office, the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada (ACSN, also known as Los Pachenca) and the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (Clan del Golfo) do not have a political status,» reads the brief, signed by Deputy Attorney General Martha Mancera, according to RCN Radio.
In this sense, it alleges that the government cannot dialogue with these groups, since they do not have a «political character» nor are they «high impact» armed structures. «In other words, these organizations can only submit to justice,» he said.
After Petro proposed to the National Liberation Army (ELN) a cessation of hostilities to start negotiating peace, different armed groups expressed their intention to join the initiative, among them those mentioned above.
Within the framework of the new round of dialogues between the Government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla, four other armed organizations showed their interest in initiating some kind of negotiation with the Colombian State, which set as an initial condition and gesture of good will the cessation of hostilities.
Thus, in addition to the ELN, two dissidents of the disappeared FARC -Segunda Marquetalia and Estado Mayor Central– and the narco-paramilitary groups of the Clan del Golfo and the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada, or Los Pachenca, announced at the end of December a unilateral ceasefire, which was joined in the New Year by the Government.
Thus, as of January 1, 2023 and until at least June 30, a bilateral ceasefire has begun in Colombia for the parties in the framework of President Petro’s aspirations to achieve «total peace», an initiative that contrasts with the stalemate of the 2016 peace agreements and the paralysis of any kind of dialogue during the mandate of Iván Duque.
Petro’s total peace was sanctioned in the so-called Law 418, which establishes its legal framework and with which it remains as state policy a project that, on the one hand, seeks to negotiate with those organizations of a political nature, such as the ELN and once the FARC, but at the same time submit others, such as paramilitaries and drug trafficking groups, to the Colombian justice system.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
