Bogotá: Vandals, Eln and dissidents behind violent days – Investigative Unit

The attacks against 68 Immediate Attention Centers (CAI) and 6 Police stations in Bogotá alone, After the case of police brutality in which Javier Ordóñez was assassinated, the vast majority were not spontaneous events.

“Behind the destruction of the CAI in different cities there is a clear and premeditated plan of groups like the Eln and dissidents of the Farc”Miguel Ceballos, High Commissioner for Peace, told EL TIEMPO this Saturday.

(We invite you to read: ‘Behind the destruction of CAI there is an Eln plan and FARC dissidents’)

“We cannot let armed groups that do not want peace and seek to end democracy sand take advantage of the genuine feelings of peaceful protest expressed by citizens who respect the law and our civil institutions, military and police ”, he warned.

The official explained that Jaime Gálvis Rivera, alias Ariel, a member of the ELN Central Command, directs the strategy known as Regional War with Urban Centrality: “It translates into vandalization and the destruction of the security infrastructure that protects our neighborhoods and cities, such as the CAI”, said.

(Also: The video, in the hands of the US, which made ‘Márquez’ tremble)

With a video and documents in hand, Ceballos added: “’Iván Márquez’ himself, who betrayed the peace process in August 2019 by launching the ‘Bolivarian Movement for the New Colombia’, announced a ‘new operational modality’ that has as an axis to focus on urban actions in main cities of the country ”.

(It may interest you: Alias ​​Ariel, the hidden power of the Eln that operates in Venezuela)

For this reason, Ceballos, as a government spokesman, does not hesitate to point out that destroying the CAI is a systematic and premeditated action that seeks to remove security from the neighborhoods, “As part of a perverse strategy led by the Eln and the FARC dissidents.”

One of the documents seized from the ELN says verbatim: “We need a guerrilla capable of transferring the military conflict to urban settings. If not, in the field there could continue to be a thousand battles that the media will most likely be in charge of making invisible and the enemy, of minimizing their real impact ”.

(Also: Claudia López summons a candle and cacerolazo this Sunday)

In fact, an intelligence officer told EL TIEMPO that the CAIs were going to be destroyed in a mobilization planned for March, but that the pandemic stopped.
The accusations towards subversive groups were also made by Hugo Acero, Secretary of Security of Bogotá, who pointed out that there was “organization and systematicity” in the attacks on the 68 CAI that were damaged in the capital.

He added in statements to this newspaper: “This is not done by citizens, this is done by people interested in creating chaos. These types of events are being investigated. But it is no secret to anyone that the Eln has been present in Bogotá for many years (…) And, of course, the Eln is one of the criminal organizations that carries out these types of acts ”. To which he added last night through twitter: “We must be vigilant since that group (the Eln) intends to capitalize on the legitimate protests of the citizens.”

There was a plan for CAI attack

For his part, the Minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, also said it this Saturday with all his letters: “It should be noted that the organized and systematic nature of what we have experienced recently is also the product of infiltration.

(Also: The faces of the fatal victims of the violence in the protests)

Infiltration of the Eln, infiltration of the FARC dissidents and infiltration of other groups with different denominations of anarchists and terrorists that do nothing more than destroy public property and citizen infrastructure dedicated to security, as happened recently in Bogotá and other capitals ”.

For his part, General Gustavo Moreno, director in charge of the Police, pointed out that the presence of “popular collectives” was detected that acted in a coordinated manner in Bogotá and other cities. The authorities are working to identify at least four groups that would have the same structure and operation as the Chavista collectives that act in the neighboring country and that are part of the strategic defense of the Nicolás Maduro regime. The authorities evidenced that these groups have even had access to firearms that would have been used in the protests.

(Also: First decisions against uniformed officers due to the death of Javier Ordóñez)

“Let’s not allow these people who are covering up and using outrage and pain to continue generating vandalism and acts of terror”, General Moreno said.

The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, said on Friday that, without ignoring the “just indignation and protest of the citizens,” it is clear that in the facts there were “criminal hands.”

Multiple causes

Despite this evidence, various analysts consulted by EL TIEMPO point out that behind the violence experienced in recent days, which left 13 dead in Bogotá and Soacha, 175 injured and 147 injured police officers, there are also more underlying causes that must be analyzed and solve.

The security and defense consultant Jairo Libreros pointed out that in addition to the outrage over the murder of the lawyer Ordóñez and the palpable disagreement of those who have seen their economic conditions deteriorate in this pandemic, the presence of groups of vandals was clear.

(It might interest you: Fracture between Claudia López and Iván Duque?)

According to the expert, the latter take advantage of any opportunity to carry out violent acts and try to generate chaos, and join criminal networks that saw the possibility of going out and looting premises and ATMs, confident of the difficulty of prosecuting them in the midst of so much public disorder.

But, without a doubt, the problem is not only related to crime or the presence of armed groups.

In Colombian society there is a palpable nonconformity that comes from different causes and that is also expressed through a rejection of State institutions. And in all this “multi-causality” there are factors that should not be ignored or overshadowed, says Juan Carlos Henao, former president of the Constitutional Court and current rector of the Externado University.

Henao points out that causes such as the following must also be taken into account: “one: fatigue from the pandemic and its economic impact; two: this fatigue is not helped by the catastrophic news of recent days, such as the atrocities of the police; three: frustration at the sudden interruption of the democratic demonstrations that were taking place; and four, the lack of a vehement speech by the national government in the face of bad news such as the assassinations of social leaders, the displacement of lands, the murder of demobilized members of the FARC EP and corruption, which does not help to distinguish, in a a society as lax as the Colombian one, between good and evil ”.

The analyst Sandra Borda believes that the protests in recent days are the continuation of the marches that began on November 21 of last year, which included unusual cacerolazos and whose motives have now been aggravated by the social and economic effects of isolation.

Some factors the analyst points out as important in the demonstrations are: a high unemployment rate in the younger population (according to Dane, youth unemployment is 29.7% as of June, higher than the average of 20.2%) ; the few educational opportunities (it is estimated that for the next semester 25% fewer students enrolled in universities and that the drop-out rate is around 50%) and the work spaces that the pandemic closed.

All this, Borda said, was intertwined with the abuses by the police that hundreds of young people face daily, taken to police stations and the Permanent Units of Justice (UPJ), which “are no man’s land.”

Another point is that since the mandatory quarantine began, the Police became the body that fined and sanctioned people who were on the streets, generating a constant state of tension between citizens and those in uniform. Which would have exacerbated people’s distrust and resentment of the police.

Shots in the protests

One of the most worrying issues of what happened this week is the impressive number of gunshot wounds: 72.

In international protocols endorsed by the United Nations since 1979 and signed by Colombia, it is established that the use of firearms is exceptional.

“Firearms should not be used except when an alleged offender offers armed resistance or endangers the lives of other people and the alleged offender cannot be reduced or arrested by applying less extreme measures,” the protocol states.

General Moreno assured that there was no order to the uniformed men to use their weapons and that, in fact, an investigation is already underway with the support of counterintelligence men and the Police Inspection to establish who acted in the face of a real threat and they shot and who did it indiscriminately. The minutes of each unit have already been collected to find out who was on duty during the protests, a census of the weapons and ammunition used was ordered and videos of the demonstrations are reviewed.

The Attorney General’s Office has already instructed the Police to deliver a report on the weapons and ammunition used, including those who were in civilian clothes at the protests. And Mayor López delivered videos showing several police officers shooting.

Without forgetting that the Police were surely not the only actor who fired, especially after what was revealed by Ceballos and other official sources, the investigation of these events is key, since it is urgent to establish with certainty whether the bullets that caused the death or injuries to civilians were shot by state agents. Knowing the truth could help a lot to rebuild the battered relationship of trust between a sector of the citizenry and the Police.

And the restoration of trust between the parties is undoubtedly a priority issue.

INVESTIGATIVE UNIT AND JUSTICE DRAFTING
On twitter: @UinvestigativaET – @JusticiaET