memorandum of justification concerning human ... - Just the Facts

UNCLASSIFIED
- 20 -
Uco Alberto Hoyos, who was in the Ministry of Interior and Justice's (MOI&J) protection
program at the time. Miguel Hoyos remains in the witness protection. The government
has resolved to improve police presence in Belén de Bajirá.
On October 23, 2006, the Prosecutor General‘s Office charged former AUC
member Hermes José Muñoz González, alias ―Diomedes,‖ for his alleged role in the
aggravated homicide of Valencia. In January 2008, he was sentenced to 28 years and 9
months in prison for aggravated homicide and criminal conspiracy. Gonzalez remains in
detention in Bellavista prison in Medellín while he appeals his conviction. After
reviewing new evidence, the Prosecutor General‘s Office arrested AUC member Julio
César Silva Borja, aliases ―El Enano‖ and ―El Indio,‖ on September 6, 2006. He was
detained after a September 15, 2006, preventative detention order and remains in custody
at Itaguí prison.
Investigations by Prosecutor General’s Office into Alleged Extrajudicial Killings
Investigations into cases of extrajudicial killings are proceeding slowly. While
some advances have been made in more recent cases, older cases continue to languish.
Numbers of extrajudicial killings vary by organization because of the different standards
applied to data collection and analysis. Between 2002 and 2009, the Colombian
government‘s Presidential Human Rights Program counts 551 complaints of cases of
homicides allegedly attributed to members of the Armed Forces, also known as
extrajudicial killings. For its part, the Center for Investigation and Popular Education
(CINEP), a Jesuit-run Colombian think tank, reports 1,142 total cases of extrajudicial
killings between 2002 and 2008, including 646 ―false positive‖ cases where the Armed
Forces allegedly murdered civilians and presented them as ―killed in combat.‖
As of May 15, 2009, 16 the Extrajudicial Killings Sub-Unit within the Prosecutor
General‘s Office had been assigned 1,056 cases (involving 1,708 victims), all of them
extrajudicial killings allegedly committed by members of the Armed Forces between
1985 and 2009. Of these, 1,019 cases remained under investigation, 21 were in the trial
phase, and convictions had been reached in the remaining 16 (83 people convicted). Of
the 1,056 cases, 42 percent occurred in the departments of Antioquia and Meta.
Members of the Army accounted for 94 percent of the 1,150 members of the Armed
Forces implicated in the cases.
The Prosecutor General‘s Office reports that its caseload dropped dramatically in
2008, tracking a similar decline in cases reported by the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR). The Prosecutor General‘s Office is
16 Time frame available as of July 31, 2009.
UNCLASSIFIED