MADRID, 26 May. (EUROPEAN PRESS) –
Colombian President Gustavo Petro stated that if the country’s justice does not investigate former paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso’s statements before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the International Criminal Court (ICC) will have to investigate.
In a speech at the inauguration of Supreme Military and Police Court judges, Petro affirmed that the crimes described by Mancuso were crimes against humanity, acts “not committed in any corner of America in the past decades.”
“This is a humanitarian crisis, of course, as stated in the Rome Statute, if the Colombian Justice cannot or does not want to do that, we would have to be prosecuted by the CFI, which will serve as an example to measure such crimes,” he said.
The statements cited by the Colombian president are related to collusion of high military commanders and paramilitary groups, and selective assassinations were carried out in various parts of the country.
Also, Mancuso explained how the defunct Department of Administrative Security (DAS) separated both Petro and current Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva, thereby killing the paramilitaries because they deemed them “dangerous for the country”.
In this sense, Petro is “a judicial confession under penalty of a series of damages in terms of legal interests that no human will ever do. Suppose you have just told a few lies,” reports RCN Radio, referring to those who criticize these statements as untrue.
In his latest attempt to be captured by the judge of the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Mancuso provided details about the alleged harmony between paramilitary units and Colombia’s political and commercial elites during the armed conflict. It was intended to provide information on individuals considered military targets.
Likewise, he assured the JEP that he could not deny that a “single senior officer” of the Army had participated in support operations with him, and that the relationship between military commanders and paramilitaries was allegedly embarked on to halt the progress of the guerrillas and even to obscure the number of victims their operations had left behind, to eliminate them. acknowledging the existence of “ovens”.
Source: Noti Merica
