SENATE STAFFER RIESER DISCUSSES HUMAN RIGHTS, SAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L BOGOTA 003617

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/21/2016
TAGS: PHUM PTER PGOV CO
SUBJECT: SENATE STAFFER RIESER DISCUSSES HUMAN RIGHTS, SAN
JOSE DE APARTADO CASES WITH PROSECUTOR GENERAL OFFICIALS

Classified By: DCM Milton K. Drucker
Reason: 1.4 (b,d)

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Summary
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1. (C) Senate Appropriations Committee staffer Tim Rieser
met on April 20 with the Fiscalia's (Prosecutor General's
office) new human rights unit chief, Leonardo Cabana, and
human rights prosecutors. Rieser emphasized his support of
the office. He asked about the trend of human rights
violations in general, and about specific cases, many of
which were related to the peace community. Cabana said his
staff made good progress with limited resources, but could do
more with more. Demobilization of paramilitaries had reduced
crimes and human rights violations. The prosecutors were
frustrated with the San Jose de Apartado peace community's
reluctance to provide information. They accepted
enthusiastically Rieser's offer to facilitate a witness
interview with someone in the U.S. whom Rieser said had
relevant evidence in one Apartado case. One prosecutor
asserted some peace community leaders were allied to the
FARC, but the "international outcry" impeded their arrest.
In his view, the leaders of the peace community supplied and
treated injured FARC. He claimed he saw supplies intended
for FARC guerrillas being transported. The prosecutors
announced arrests in one case where Rieser expressed an
interest (Orlando Valencia),and expressed optimism about
recent developments in another (Curumani). Cabana promised
to review the materials Rieser left with him (two letters
from Senator Leahy to Iguaran and President Uribe regarding
the peace community, respectively, and a memorandum from
Amnesty International to the State Department) and get back
to Rieser as soon as possible with status reports. End
summary.

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Fiscalia Resources, Continued Abuses, Apartado
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2. (C) Senate staffer Rieser opened the April 20 meeting
with human rights prosecutors by asking three questions: Does
the Fiscalia's human rights unit have sufficient resources to
do its work effectively? Why does the U.S. continue to hear
of significant human rights abuse allegations six years after
the U.S. had invested over $3 billion in Plan Colombia? What
progress could prosecutors report on the series of human
rights cases associated with the peace community located near
San Jose de Apartado? He said the U.S. supported the
Fiscalia's work and wanted to make sure the Human Rights
Unit, in particular, had the staff, vehicles, communications
equipment and transportation to get to crime scenes quickly
and investigate thoroughly. Rieser said he understood that
some 160 members of the peace community had been killed since
1997 and no one had been held accountable.

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Fiscalia: Doing Well, Could do More with More
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3. (C) New Human Rights Unit chief Cabana told Rieser the
Unit is doing well with limited resources but could do more
with more. He praised the Embassy's support of the Unit's
work, but said it was not uncommon for a team of prosecutors
to delay or abort missions because of a lack of forensic
investigators to accompany them. The Fiscalia used to have
30 such investigators in Bogota but is now down to twelve (in
part because the Fiscalia has reassigned investigators to the
new Justice and Peace Unit). In some cases, the Fiscalia
team had arrived at a crime scene and were forced to curtail
its work because the Fiscalia had reassigned an investigator
to an emergency matter. In such cases, Cabana said, the
investigation lost its momentum, witness testimony was harder
to obtain, and the victimized community lost faith in
justice. In response to Rieser's questions, Cabana said the
Human Rights Unit typically faces delays of up to two weeks
before securing military approval for helicopter
transportation to a crime scene. While the military is
helpful in taking the human rights team to otherwise
inaccessible locations and providing security, it has
pressing operational needs as well and the Human Rights Unit
has to wait. Cabana told Rieser the Human Rights Unit does
not have ready access to cellular phone interception
equipment (it shares this resource with other Fiscalia units)
or polygraph machines. According to Cabana, the most helpful
additional resource for the Unit would be more "judicial
police," or forensic investigators.


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Abuse Claims Down but Still Too High
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4. (C) Cabana told Rieser that human rights abuse
allegations have dropped in Colombia, in part as a result of
paramilitary demobilizations, but are still too high. He
hopes to clear up outstanding human rights investigations by
obtaining evidence from demobilized paramilitaries. In
Cabana's view, collaboration of the military or police with
paramilitary forces "is not the same" as in the past. In the
last six months, the Unit has focused on cases in which
guerrillas are accused of committing gross human rights
violations, and has devoted time to the "torture" allegations
associated with the abuse of army recruits in Tolima
Department.

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San Jose de Apartado
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5. (C) Rieser spent a significant amount of the 2 1/2 hour
meeting discussing human rights matters related to the peace
community located near San Jose de Apartado with Cabana and
two prosecutors working on Apartado cases, who joined the
meeting for this discussion. Rieser said the peace community
had a long history of suffering from human rights violations,
relations with the GOC were polarized, and witnesses to
massacres refused to testify because they feared reprisals.
He said Senator Leahy had written to Fiscal Iguaran in
December 2005 to relate concerns about two Apartado massacres
(July 2000 and February 2005),and offered to facilitate the
taking of witness testimony in the U.S. of a person who had
information relevant to the 2005 crime; the prosecutors
enthusiastically accepted, and Rieser took their contact
details and said he would be in touch. According to Rieser,
Iguaran did not reply to Leahy on the issue of the witness.
Leahy had also written to President Uribe about Apartado,
citing the two massacre cases and two additional Apartado
murders, whose victims were Rodrigo Salas David in November
2005, and Edilberto Vasquez Cardona in January 2006. In the
latter two cases, Rieser said there was no doubt the military
had killed them but the issue was whether the killings were
justified. Later in the discussion, Rieser cited other
cases, drawing from an Amnesty International memorandum to
the State Department dated April 4, 2006.


6. (C) Prosecutors Luis Alejandro Guevara and Nelson Casas
told Rieser they had both received threats as a result of
their work but were determined to press ahead. Guevara said
he had to leave Colombia for exile in Costa Rica for a year
after investigating cases associated with paramilitaries in
Cucuta. Casas said he was currently using protection
measures (armored car, family moved residence) because of
repeated cases in which cars or trucks with tinted windows
and no license plates followed his wife to her place of work.
Casas said he thinks the surveillance methods against his
wife were likely carried out by paramilitary or military
elements, but he could not be sure.


7. (C) According to Guevara, who is in charge of
investigating the attack on the GOC Commission of Inquiry
sent to investigate the February 2005 massacre, his extensive
investigation and numerous sworn, written witness statements
from captured and demobilized FARC members and locals shows
"beyond doubt" that leaders of the peace community are allied
to the FARC. Guevara said the leaders provided supplies to
the FARC's 5th Front, which operates in the area, and helped
treat injured guerrillas. He said he saw on several
occasions mules and horses laden with supplies from the peace
community trekking into the mountains where the FARC had its
camps. He has not tried to arrest the leaders yet because of
"the expected international outcry." He reported that
"Carlos Hugo," who he said was a former peace community
leader, was now a FARC militia leader in the zone; an arrest
warrant is out for him. A FARC 5th Front member called
"Arturo" was responsible for telling peace community families
to share houses on occasion to leave residences vacant for
temporary FARC use. (At this point, Casas said he recently
visited a house in the peace community and saw seven teenage
girls inside wearing identical olive green t-shirts and
shorts; he surmised they were from the FARC but "turned away
because I did not want to pursue it.") Guevara said on a
recent trip to the peace community the police told him there
were 9 radio communication devices operating within about a 1
km radius (0.6 miles),and they were not from the military or
the police. Guevara told Rieser that on the day of the

attack on the Commission of Inquiry the 17th Brigade were
"days away" from the scene.


8. (C) Casas said he was responsible for investigating the
February 21, 2005 massacre of 4 adults and 4 minors who lived
in the peace community and expressed frustration that
witnesses refused to testify (mentioning leaders such as
former mayor Gloria Cuartas, priest Javier Gerardo, and Clara
Rojas, as well as other local residents). Casas said local
military interviews have not yielded results. The military
was about 2,700 meters (about 1.5 miles) from the massacre
site on the 21st, and "could possibly" have walked there and
back. He reported that demobilized FARC guerrillas said the
FARC committed the murders because the 4 adults "had decided
to return to civilian life." Casas said the gruesome manner
of the killings (limbs hacked off, throats cut) was
consistent with paramilitary murders (whether committed by
them or by those who wanted to leave that impression). Casas
told Rieser there was evidence of an M60 grenade explosion in
a peace community house, but such grenades are used by the
military and the FARC. A journalist gave Casas a description
of a man wearing a soldier's uniform washing a machete in a
nearby stream, but the description of the soldier was too
vague to be helpful. Casas said the Procuraduria (Inspector
General's office) had oral testimony from local residents who
say that two witnesses will not come forward because they
were associated with the FARC.


9. (C) In response, Rieser repeated that he wanted to ensure
the Human Rights Unit had the resources to pursue
investigations and get convictions. He expressed
disappointment that over 100 people had provided evidence in
the July 2000 massacre case and yet "nothing had happened."
He said he would like an update on the early December 2005
Curumani massacre of 22 people, and a status report on the
Orlando Valencia murder (kidnapped on October 15, 2005, whose
body was discovered on October 26). Rieser passed the
prosecutors copies of Senator Leahy's letters to Iguaran and
Uribe and a copy of the Amnesty International memorandum.


10. (C) Unit Chief Cabana said he would provide Rieser with
updates as soon as possible. On the Orlando Valencia case,
prosecutor Guevara said the Fiscalia had arrested two former
paramilitaries (one was "Diomedes," a local paramilitary
leader) for the murder. With regard to Curumani, Guevara
said human rights NGO MINGA had supplied two valuable
witnesses whose testimony sounded promising.
WOOD