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The Investigation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice sent the Prosecutor’s Office the preliminary investigation that was still against former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez for the cases of the El Aro, San Roque and La Granja massacres, as well as the murder of the human rights defender, Jesús María Valle.
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These crimes were committed by paramilitaries when Uribe was governor of Antioquia. Former President Uribe had a preliminary inquiry in the Supreme Court of Justice to which he had been summoned to a free version on Wednesday for those events.
However, the high court established that after Uribe’s resignation from the Senate, as well as losing competence to continue investigating him for alleged bribery of witnesses and procedural fraud, nor can he continue to bring the preliminary case against him for these crimes committed by the paramilitaries.
Thus, the high court sent the entire file that file 45110 had to the Prosecutor’s Office. The decision was made unanimously by the Investigation Chamber. Now it will be up to the Attorney General’s Office to investigate whether or not Uribe could have an alleged responsibility in these crimes that in 2018 were declared as “against humanity”, which means that in these processes the prescription cannot operate.
This investigation had already been in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office, which under the mandate of the then Prosecutor Eduardo Montealegre, decided to overturn an inhibitory order that favored Uribe in that process. Then the file went to the Supreme Court of Justice but it was for years without any movement in the office of the investigated magistrate Gustavo Malo, prosecuted for the so-called ‘Toga cartel’.
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With the double instance law of 2018, the case was left in the hands of the Investigation Chamber, under the office of magistrate César Reyes Medina. Thus, this Chamber investigated Uribe for three facts. The first, the Instruction Room explained in a statement, is the one that has to do with the alleged formation, promotion or financing in the mid-1990s, an armed structure organized outside the law, which operated in northeast Antioquia.
That structure, according to the process, apparently He had used the Hacienda Guacharacas as a base of operations, which at the time was owned by the Uribe Vélez, located in the municipalities of Yolombó and San Roque (Antioquia). In addition, the file says, that organization apparently “committed attacks against the civilian population of the municipality of San Roque, among them the massacres that occurred on July 13 and September 17, 1996.”
Second, the record of the preliminary investigation against Uribe investigated his alleged “intervention in his capacity as governor of Antioquia.” in the violent acts suffered by the population of Ituango, in Antioquia in different massacres such as those of La Granja, on June 11, 1996, and the El Aro massacre, committed between October 22 and 31, 1997.
In the same context, affirms the high court, other crimes occurred such as the kidnapping of 17 people, the burning of houses, theft of livestock and the forced displacement of a significant number of families from Ituango.
The third case in which the Supreme Court of Justice investigated Uribe was the murder of human rights leader Jesús María Valle, who was also a lawyer and councilor of Ituango. He was assassinated on February 27, 1998 in Medellín.
(Also read: What is behind the FARC’s recognition of kidnappings and sexual abuse?)
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