TheEconomistFebruary 6th 2021 251C
ritics of colombia’speace deal with
the farc rebel group, which in 2016
ended a 52-year war with the government,
complain that it lets the guerrillas off too
easily. The fault, in their view, lies with the
“special jurisdiction for peace” (jep), an in-
stitution set up under the accord to investi-
gate and judge crimes committed during
the conflict. The Democratic Centre party,
founded by Álvaro Uribe, who fought the
farcas Colombia’s president in the early
2000s and is the mentor of the incumbent,
Iván Duque, claims that the jep’s purpose is
to go after government soldiers while se-
curing impunity for farccriminals.
On January 28th the jepproved the crit-
ics wrong. In its first ruling since its found-
ing four years ago, it indicted eight farc
leaders for war crimes and crimes against
humanity. All were connected with the
group’s practice of taking hostages and ran-
soming them to finance its war against the
state. Among the alleged culprits are theformer top commander, Rodrigo Londoño,
known as Timochenko, and two leaders
who are now members of Congress. Seven
of the eight (one has died) have 30 working
days from the ruling either to accept or
deny the accusations. If they accept, the jep
will restrict their freedom, perhaps by or-
dering them to de-mine land or build
schools in war-torn areas. If they reject the
charges, the jep’s investigative unit will
seek to prove them in a trial. If the defen-
dants are convicted, the jep’s judges could
sentence them to 20 years in prison.
The 322-page ruling reveals hitherto un-
disclosed details of the conditions in
which the farckept some of the 21,396 hos-
tages they took from 1990 to 2016. The guer-rillas, who claimed to be fighting for a more
just society, seized rich and poor alike.
They beat and starved the hostages. Many
were forced to urinate in their clothes and
not allowed to clean themselves for
months. Some were locked in wooden box-
es barely larger than their bodies. The re-
bels ordered some to dig their own graves
as a form of psychological torture.
The jep’s revelations show that Colom-
bia’s unique “transitional-justice” system
can succeed. Most such tribunals have
been established by international bodies,
such as the un. The jepis the first such
body for prosecuting war crimes and
crimes against humanity to have been
created by the warring parties through a
peace accord. It adjudicates such crimes
through “restorative”, rather than retribu-
tive, justice. This seeks to reconcile victims
with offenders, mostly by uncovering the
truth. The tribunal talked to more than
2,500 kidnapping victims. Colombia’s or-
dinary justice system had not done that
when it tried some farcmembers in ab-
sentia during the war. The jeptook testi-
mony from the hostage-takers, who under
the peace agreement are obliged to confess.
Some spoke for 16 hours.
The farc’s leaders claimed to be
shocked by the gruesome accounts, says
Julieta Lemaitre, the judge investigating
hostage-taking. Commanders like Timo-ColombiaThe terrible truth
BOGOTÁ
A peace tribunal issues a crushing judgment against the farcThe Americas
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