00:00Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe could face other investigations for crimes against humanity
00:05while he was governor of the Department of Antioquia in 1995 and 1997.
00:12From Bogotá, our colleague Hernán Tovaro with the report.
00:16In audios released after a statement in a hearing before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace,
00:23the brothers Francisco and Jaime Angulo Osorio, responsible for the murder of a human rights defender.
00:30Our part of a compendium of testimonies that linked the former president to the massacres of El Oro and La Granja
00:37in the Department of Antioquia during the years 1995 and 1997 when he was governor.
00:51They authorized the operation and in history we have come to know that all the members of these organizations
00:57were mostly the paramilitary chiefs and commanders themselves.
01:05They were involved in human rights violations in everything that happened in Antioquia and in the country.
01:11It was the pilot at the national level, it was the rehearsal with which they acted,
01:14these organizations became apparently legal cooperatives during the day
01:18and were paramilitary cooperatives at night.
01:28Their statements are generated under the investigation being carried out in this department
01:32and the responsibility of civilian third parties in relation to crimes perpetrated
01:37by the security forces and agents of the state.
01:40The brothers have claimed to have been part of these organizations,
01:43intermediaries between the paramilitaries, the army and the governor's office,
01:47in a relationship of financing and delivery of information,
01:51testimonies that are added to other statements.
01:53Local residents and former paramilitaries in particular testified that a helicopter
02:07from the governor's office of Antioquia flew overhead during the massacre of the Hope.
02:12It is impossible to think that the governor of that time,
02:23who followed in detail all the movements of his officials,
02:28would not have had information about what was happening.
02:31A network of logistical and financial support that involved civilians,
02:44state actors, and adds more and new elements in relation to the masacres of El Oro,
02:48where 17 peasants were killed, and La Granja, where for people died,
02:53events that occurred in the municipality of Ishuano, Antioquia.
02:56In 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned Colombia for these events,
03:02and the Supreme Court declared them crimes against humanity that are not subject to statute of limitations.
03:11There are mechanisms in place the 1968 Convention on the Imprescriptibility of Crimes Against Humanity
03:18that the Colombian state ratified and then ratified in 2002.
03:22Rome Statute, which in its Article 29 establishes that crimes against humanity are imprescriptible
03:28and that is part of our political constitution and is also in the Colombian Penal Code.
03:37The victims hope that these investigations will move forward
03:42and reveal the possible responsibility of the governor at the time, Alvaro Uribe Velez,
03:46who is sentenced for other crimes to 12 years' imprisonment,
03:50which he provisionally evaded due to a tutela action in his favor.
03:53Hernán Darío Tobar, Gaitante el Sur, Bogotá, Colombia.
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