AUC REJECTS LAW FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BOGOTA 002566

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/17/2015
TAGS: PTER KJUS PHUM CO AUC
SUBJECT: AUC REJECTS LAW FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE

Classified By: Ambassador William B. Wood for reasons
1.4 (b) and (d).

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Summary
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1. (C) The AUC publicly rejected the GOC's draft Law for
Justice and Peace on March 15. They complained it did not
provide genuine reinsertion benefits, generated too much
legal uncertainty, should be a statutory law, and imposed
unfair prison sentences. In response, the House and Senate
first committees rejected a proposal to make the law
statutory. The Senate committee rejected a proposal to allow
the AUC to present its views to Congress, but the House
committee approved it. The AUC will continue to try to
influence the outcome of the law, especially when it is
debated in the plenary, where AUC influence is greater. End
summary.


2. (U) On March 15, the leadership of the United Self Defense
Forces of Colombia (AUC) issued a communique addressed to
Congress rejecting the GOC's draft Law for Justice and Peace.
They claim that:

-- The AUC was formed in part from a failed demobilization of
illegal self-defense forces in Magdalena and Cordoba
Departments in the early 1990s. They warn that the GOC's
draft law would repeat the same mistakes as the earlier
demobilization by focusing too much on punishment and
disarmament instead of providing reinsertion and
re-socialization services.

-- The law generates too much legal uncertainty for
beneficiaries.

-- It should be statutory rather than ordinary legislation
and therefore cannot be debated in extraordinary session.

-- The five to eight year mandatory time in confinement is
really not an alternative sentence because it is equivalent
to what an ordinary criminal sentenced to 40 years would
serve after reducing his sentence with good behavior,
studying, working, and other reductions permitted in the
criminal code. They specify that they are willing to accept
a law that requires a longer period of confinement, but only
if they can reduce it through all options available in the
criminal code.

-- The law is specifically designed to punish the AUC because
it only applies to groups that demobilize before the law is
finalized, which they say would be around the end of May.
They said it was not believable that the country's guerrilla
groups would enter in a peace process before that time.


3. (C) The communique does not directly threaten to break off
talks if the draft law passes. However, since public debate
on the demobilization laws began in earnest in February,
negotiations have been on hold. Restrepo's staff has said
they do not expect another bloc to demobilize until the law
is finalized. OAS verification mission chief was in Cordoba
last week in part to determine why talks had stalled.


4. (SBU) In reaction to the communique, Senator Dario
Martinez (who has been highly critical of the GOC's draft
law) proposed delaying the debate and making the law
statutory. On March 15, both the Senate and House first
committees rejected the proposal. On the same day,
Representative Rocio Arias (who is an outspoken proponent of
the AUC) proposed inviting the AUC to present their views to
Congress. The Senate committee rejected the proposal, but
the House committee approved it.


5. (C) This will not be the last time the AUC tries to
influence the outcome and insert itself into the debate.
Their pressure will likely increase when the law reaches the
full House and Senate, where there are more members
sympathetic to the AUC.

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Unofficial Translation:
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Honorable Congressmen: We request to speak.
A brief reminder about the demobilizations of self-defense
forces in Magdalena and Cordoba, carried out at the beginning
of the 1990s, illustrates how processes of subjugation to
justice end up plunging the country into a vicious circle of
recurring violence. Especially when it has to do with armed
organizations that have not been defeated militarily.

There is no doubt that when we accepted the government's
invitation to hold political negotiations about peace we were
committed to contributing to the deactivation of the war
through a process of demobilization, disarmament, and
reinsertion that would definitively eliminate paramilitarism
as a player in the armed confrontation. For this reason, the
current negotiation cannot be reduced to simply taking apart
the self-defense forces structures and counting weapons.
This has to be a genuine process that, on one hand,
facilitates reinsertion to productive life for thousands of
combatants and, on the other hand, generates in the abandoned
regions a strong institutionalization, which would require
the state to intervene in regional security, reactivate the
economy, and invest in health, education, housing, basic
public services, and productive employment. This is what we
will continue to count on.

This is precisely what did not occur in Magdalena and
Cordoba, where there was a process of subjugation to justice,
which became nothing mora than a simple mathematical
operation of counting weapons and militarily retaking
territory. Several years later, several self-defense
strongholds that had avoided demobilization re-formed and
expanded throughout national territory thanks to, among other
reasons, the addition of hundreds of ex-combatants who had
suffered from the government's failed demobilization. This
was how the AUC was born. Like it or not, the AUC are sons
of these irregular processes which led us to recuperate
territory that had been neglected by the state in order to
create conditions of social and economic order for hundreds
of marginalized communities that were left with only two
options: plant coca or landmines.

We have repeatedly insisted on the political nature of
negotiations, whose fundamental goal is to eliminate all the
factors that make the AUC a "necessary" part of the armed
conflict. It is clear that this process of subjugation to
justice, which they are attempting to impose on us, will not
create the necessary economic and social conditions to allow
an eventual and definitive end to paramilitarism.

The bill that the government is discussing with the
congressional committees lays out a legal framework for
demobilizing and disarming several AUC structures, but lacks
an effective mechanism for peace or reconciliation. The
result is that, from the political point of view, it is an
overly unstable instrument to end paramilitarism. That much
is clear.

In addition to its inability to establish peace, the bill
generates all kinds of uncertainties about future juridical
security. It seems to us that the urgency surrounding the
bill, led it to be ordinary legislation when, in our view, it
should be statutory as it establishes criminal procedures,
offers some legal benefits, denies the application of
substitute prisons, restricts guarantees and rights, and
outlines certain punishable conduct.

Being a statutory bill, by constitutional mandate, it cannot
be debated in extraordinary sessions at the President's
orders. Moreover, as a statutory law, it is officially
controlled by the constitution, which would determine its
constitutionality before it could be finalized. This would
not happen to ordinary laws, which instead could be declared
unconstitutional two or three years after being passed. We
consider the constitutionality of this future law to be the
first threat against the current peace process. It would put
demobilized combatants in serious danger.

At the same time, it is necessary to address the distorted
and vicious view that some furious enemies of the peace
process have publicized in the media that there is a high
level of impunity in the level of punishments established by
consensus in the Presidential Palace. We must say that a
term in confinement, estimated to be between five and eight
years, exempt from benefits granted by ordinary laws that
apply to all Colombians, ends up being almost equal to what a
criminal sentenced to forty years in jail, who is subject to
all the reductions allowed under normal law, would serve.
Moreover, the said criminal would not have to confess, be
economically ruined, or ask for public pardon.

Given the way things are, from the penal point of view, it
would be easier to curtail the sentence for the murderer
Gavarito, accused of raping, killing, and chopping up more
than twenty children, than for the AUC members, who are
disposed to voluntarily turn in more than 18,000 guns and
combatants, after many years of being obliged to take up arms
in the face of a indolent and resigned state.

In effect, according to the framework of the current
accusatorial system, a person given a sentence of forty years
in prison can reduce the penalty to up to fifty percent by
plea bargaining and voluntarily accepting charges. So, we
would be talking about twenty years in prison. This would be
reduced to twelve years by conditional liberty (parole).
Then the prisoner could work, study, or teach, for which the
Prison Code allows reductions of four months per year. This
would make the sentence nine years.

We would be disposed to accept a discrete increase in the
sentences contemplated in the bill in exchange having the
reduction benefits that the criminal codes grant to all
convicts. Let us look, for example, at the case of the
rendition of punishments: if the central goal of the
punishment is re-socialization, we do not understand how
re-socialization would be possible if we are deprived of a
reason to work, study, or teach.

Returning to the bill, in terms of its efficacy as an
instrument for peace, the government has said that it would
apply to all illegal armed groups that demobilize and work
for national peace. However, the time frame of when the law
would be in force negates the concept of universality that
the government attempted to establish. Article 65
established that the law would apply only to actions taken
after the law goes into effect.

This means that if the so-called justice and peace law goes
into effect on May 31, its "benefits," exemptions, and
prerogatives, would only cover actions taken before this
date. It is certainly unlikely that the FARC, ELN, and other
self-defense forces not participating in the peace process,
will take actions to open a peace process with the government
before May 31. In other words, if the FARC were to decide to
start a peace process in the next four or five years, they
would have to stop committing crimes and renounce all
criminal activity by May 31 if they want to benefit from this
law. No one believes this will happen.

In conclusion, this bill was deliberately designed for only
one of the actors in Colombia's conflict. We do not doubt
that if this initiative, with its supposed "universal"
character, were also designed for the communist guerrillas,
it would not have time in confinement, individual trials,
confessions converted into denunciations by the dangerous
concept of "collaboration with justice," legal insecurity,
special tribunals, denial and restriction of guarantees and
rights, and seizure of assets that were acquired licitly.
More importantly, it would be free from criticism of the
hypocritical spokesmen of a new morality who have turned the
concept of peace into intrigue, vengeance, and politicking.

Santa Fe de Ralito, March 15, 2005.

Central Staff.

Ramon Isaza
General Commander of the AUC

Ernesto Baez de al Serna
Political Director of the AUC

Julian Bolivar
Chief of the AUC Negotiating Staff



WOOD