DEMOBILIZATION LAW APPROVED IN COMMITTEE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BOGOTA 003555

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/14/2015
TAGS: PTER KJUS PINR PGOV PHUM CO
SUBJECT: DEMOBILIZATION LAW APPROVED IN COMMITTEE

REF: BOGOTA 03223

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

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Summary
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1. (C) On April 12, the Senate and House First Committees
finished voting on the Law for Justice and Peace, including
on the three most controversial articles (reftel). The
changes made to the text provide added safeguards for our
ability to extradite drug traffickers. Article 2 on the
scope of the law was passed and does not include any
reference to an armed conflict. Article 20 was passed. It
allows authorities to combine all charges against a
beneficiary for procedural reasons only. Language allowing a
possible loophole to avoid extradition was removed. Article
64 was rejected, although it is likely to return in another
form. It had said that belonging to a paramilitary group was
an act of sedition and a political crime. Instead, an
alternative article was passed that allows demobilized
persons to be pardoned for certain minor, non-violent crimes.
Article 67 on the law's time frame passed easily. Three new
articles were approved: (1) the GOC will allocate necessary
funding to the existing asset forfeiture law, (2) the GOC
will provide education, employment projects, counseling to
the demobilized, and (3) the Superior District Court
magistrates implementing the law will be elected by the
Supreme Court. There will be an eight calendar day waiting
period until the Senate and House plenaries take up the
debate. End summary.

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Article 2: No Armed Conflict
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2. (C) Article 2 describes the scope of the law and specifies
it will regulate investigation, processing, sanction, and
legal benefits for members of illegal armed groups (IAGs),
who demobilize and contribute to national reconciliation.
The article avoids reference to an "armed conflict," which
had been a key GOC objective. On April 11, the article
passed the House and Senate First Committees with little
debate. During earlier debates, Senator Rafael Pardo and his
supporters had argued that article 2 should be replaced with
article 8 from their rival draft, which acknowledged the
existence of an "armed conflict."

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Article 20: "Conexidad" Removed
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3. (C) Article 20 allows the Superior District Court to
combine all legal proceedings against a beneficiary into one
case. The original article was entitled "connectivity and
accumulation of proceedings and punishments." Several
Congressmen had complained that the term "connectivity" would
have allowed beneficiaries to claim that their major crimes,
including drug trafficking, were connected to their
pardonable crimes and therefore blocked from extradition.
GOC ally Representative Roberto Camacho proposed new text
that removed the term "connectivity" and stated that the
combination of proceedings was for procedural reasons only.
The article's new text was approved.

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Article 64: Pardon But No Political Crimes
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4. (C) Article 64 was rejected. It had said that belonging
to a paramilitary group was an act of sedition, and that
sedition was a political crime and would carry the same
punishment as rebellion against the state. According to the
current criminal code, paramilitarism is a common crime and
insurgency (guerrilla groups) is a political crime. Common
crimes are not pardonable under Law 782. The GOC had claimed
that the article was needed to give paramilitaries and
guerrillas equal treatment under Law 782. Some claimed that
allowing membership in a paramilitary group to be a political
crime would enable paramilitaries to claim that drug
trafficking was also a political crime and therefore not
extraditable.

5. (C) On April 12, an alternative article was approved. It
states that demobilized persons can be pardoned for
conspiracy to commit a crime, illegal carrying of arms,
illegal use of uniforms or insignias, and other benefits in
article 343 of the normal criminal code. Article 343 states
that the jail term for acts of terrorism is ten to 15 years,
but specifies that the sentence for intimidating or
threatening via telephone, tape, video, or anonymous letters
is two to five years. Minister of Interior and Justice Sabas
Pretelt announced publicly that the GOC was satisfied with
the new article, but that they would bring up the issue of
sedition again in the plenary.

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Article 67: Time Frame
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6. (C) Article 67 specifies the law's time frame. Crimes
committed after the bill becomes law will not be eligible for
alternative sentences. For example, if an IAG demobilized
after the bill became law, the members would only benefit for
crimes they had committed before the law went in effect. A
proposal to expand this time limit will be debated in the
plenary.

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Three New Articles
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7. (C) Three new articles were approved:

-- The GOC and the Prosecutor General's Office will allocate
sufficient funds for the application of the asset forfeiture
law.

-- The GOC will enroll demobilized persons in psychological
counseling and education or employment projects.

-- The magistrates of the Superior District Court who are
responsible for the Law of Justice and Peace will be elected
by the Supreme Court from a list of nominations provided by
the Administrative Chamber of the Superior Council.

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Rejected Articles
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8. (C) Two newly proposed articles were rejected, primarily
on the grounds of redundancy:

-- Demobilized persons cannot continue committing crimes or
move to conflict areas. If they do so, they lose all
benefits. Senator Pardo was one of the drafters of this
proposal.

-- Once the peace process with the United Self Defense Forces
of Colombia (AUC) or other IAGs becomes active, they cannot
continue conducting private justice, kidnapping, terrorism,
extorsion, intimidation, or spreading the conflict.
Reinsertion programs cannot be used for criminal activity.

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Plenary Next
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9. (C) There will be a minimum eight calendar day waiting
period until the debates can begin in the House and Senate
plenaries. During these debates, Congressional rules state
the plenaries cannot introduce changes that are radically
different from the text approved in Committee or that were
not debated in Committee (a somewhat subjective standard).
This regulation provides for some flexibility, but if the
plenaries attempt to make major changes the law risks being
nullified by the Constitutional Court on procedural grounds.
(Although the Justice and Peace Law is normal legislation and
will not automatically be cleared by the Constitutional
Court, individual lawsuites against the law can bring it to
the Court.)

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Comment
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10. (C) The changes to article 20 and the elimination of
article 64 provide added safeguards for our ability to
extradite drug traffickers.
WOOD