War crimes and crimes against humanity are charged against ten middle managers of the former FARC

The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) charged this Friday war crimes and crimes against humanity against ten members of the central command of the extinct guerrilla organization FARC for the alleged commission of kidnappings and extortion in the midst of the armed conflict in the country.

The decision was announced by Judge Julieta Lemaitre Ripoll, a member of the court, who gave details of the behaviors recognized by the ex-guerrillas appearing and that are within the framework of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Peace Court or Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) was created after the peace agreement signed in 2016 by the State and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla after five decades of confrontations. Thousands of ex-guerrillas, soldiers and civilians who were involved in the conflict appear before the JEP.

One of the main cases in which the JEP works is related to the kidnapping, within which the ten ex-combatants of the former FARC were charged.

According to magistrate Lemaitre, the central joint command of the FARC, to which the defendants belonged, “adopted the policy of financing itself through kidnapping” and extortion, mainly. These conducts, which constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, would have been carried out in three departments of the country.

“He created a sophisticated system of kidnapping and extortion to comply with the quota of money that had to be delivered to the FARC secretariat,” the highest instance of that guerrilla, said the magistrate.

The judicial official said that “those appearing recognized that the purpose of the kidnapping was to finance the military apparatus to fulfill the purpose of taking Bogotá and winning the war.”

And he affirmed that, in any case, they are “middle commands” of that extinct guerrilla organization.

The president of the JEP, Roberto Carlos Vidal, explained that the accusation known on Friday about the ten ex-members of the FARC will now pass into the hands of another instance of justice for peace in which the trial of these defendants will be held.

“At this moment, the trial against all the members of the former FARC secretariat has already begun, in which they all recognized their responsibility for serious international crimes,” said Vidal.

The FARC secretariat is the highest instance of this organization and its members accepted the jurisdiction of the JEP from the beginning.

Until now, the JEP has not pronounced convictions on any of the ex-members of the extinct FARC or on other appearing parties and, for now, it continues to advance in trials on the participants in the armed conflict in Colombia.

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