[ad_1]
The former members of the FARC secretariat began to clear up the uncertainty that for 25 years has surrounded one of the assassinations that most strongly shook the political history of Colombia.
Indeed, in a letter sent to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) made public yesterday, and in a subsequent pronouncement, former bets of the defunct guerrilla declared that they were willing to acknowledge their responsibility in the murder of the three-time presidential candidate by the Party. Conservative, Álvaro Gómez Hurtado.
The crime was perpetrated on November 2, 1995, when a blast hit him in his vehicle just as he was leaving the Sergio Arboleda University, in Bogotá, where he was teaching the chair of Political and Constitutional History of Colombia.
Since then, the Gómez family has blamed this crime against humanity (thus recognized in 2017 by the Prosecutor’s Office) on then President of the Republic Ernesto Samper Pizano, since Gómez was one of its strongest critics and political opponents.
For this reason, the statement made yesterday by Magistrate Patricia Linares, president of the JEP, in which she says that the Chamber for the Recognition of Truth and Responsibility “has received a letter on behalf of the former FARC Secretariat, in which it is offered provide the truth, clarify the events that occurred and assume responsibility early ”in six homicides, including that of Gómez, stirred the national atmosphere.
So much so that President Iván Duque declared from Villavicencio that justice cannot allow that in this way an attempt is made to obstruct the true responsibility behind that murder, “because to adjudicate those crimes when there are guarantees that no one will pay jail alone it leaves doubts, suspicions and concerns (…) And if someone is attributing it and it is not true, it must be understood that a crime is being committed to obstruct justice in our country ”.
Read more: Farc admits responsibility in assassination of Álvaro Gómez
Family at odds
For Enrique Gómez Martínez, lawyer for the Gómez family, “what happens here is that the former FARC secretariat lent itself to wash the names of Ernesto Samper and Horacio Serpa.”
According to his historical account, it was José Obdulio Gaviria, today a senator for the Democratic Center, who took to the file in 2001 some documents he received in El Caguán (Caquetá), where the peace talks with Andrés Pastrana were held, which included emails in the which “Mono Jojoy” spoke with “Raúl Reyes” about the murder of Gómez.
“Gaviria gave those documents to the prosecutor Pablo Murcia, the one he knew the most about the Farc because he was conducting the investigation of ‘Raúl Reyes’ computer, and by analyzing the emails he detected that they were false and that Reyes’ computer did not appear anything about it. That is why the Prosecutor’s Office dismissed this line of investigation, ”Gómez Martínez told EL COLOMBIANO.
And he assured that the interest of Samper and the Farc is that the Prosecutor’s Office does not advance in the interrogations that are pending and soon to be carried out, such as that of Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, former head of the Cali Cartel, and in the collection of other documentary evidence, “To what we are strongly going to oppose.”
Samper responds
For his part, former president Ernesto Samper told EL COLOMBIANO that he was unaware that there has even ever been the hypothesis that the FARC had killed Álvaro Gómez.
“This recognition is being done in a true process that Horacio Serpa (his then Minister of Government) and I deserve credibility and respect, but we hope that the JEP will carry out its investigations on the manner, time and place of the events in order to make a definitive statement about them, ”Samper said.
And he added that “in the last 10 years we have been victims of all kinds of insults and slander on the part of Álvaro Gómez’s family, and although we understand the economic reasons that encourage them to turn this into a State crime, we categorically reject all these offenses of a personal nature that offend the memory of Gómez himself ”, of whom he stressed that he was his personal friend and that of at least three ministers: Juan Carlos Esguerra, Daniel Manzuera and Rodrigo Marín.
“We have always been looking for the truth, in that sense we have not ruled out any investigative hypothesis and we are not going to do it in this case either; what we are in a position to reject is that we may have some relationship with this crime, “concluded Samper.
Exfarc will give explanations
Eight former members of the former FARC Secretariat, among them Rodrigo Londoño, known as “Tiomochenko”, the last commander of that guerrilla, stated yesterday afternoon in a statement that “after many hours of individual and collective reflections, honoring our commitment with the construction of a fairer society founded on the foundations of the broadest and most complete truth possible, we have decided to clarify the facts and the reasons for the murder of Álvaro Gómez ”.
They said that they will explain to the JEP and the Truth Commission why the conservative leader was considered by the FARC a “military objective” and “a class enemy” and why they decided to silence this fact for 25 years.
“We recognize that it was a mistake to have assassinated a politician of the stature of Álvaro Gómez. We have read their biographies and today we know that their contribution to peace would have been fundamental. But the war clouds the vision of the future and only allows us to see reality in black and white to divide it into friends and enemies, ”the statement read.
You are interested: Duque asks that other hypotheses in the Gómez case not be rejected
Consistency with the Agreement
In addition to clarifying this assassination, the ex-guerrilla commanders offered to give truth and acknowledge their responsibility in the murders of Hernando Pizarro León-Gómez, José Fedor Rey, Jesús Antonio Bejarano, Fernando Landazábal Reyes, and Pablo Emilio Guarín (see boxes).
Part of this is surprising, since some were leaders of different ideological spectra and in most cases there were no indications that pointed to the responsibility of the Farc. For this reason, Álvaro Villarraga, conflict expert and former director of the Truth Agreement of the Memory Center, said that this is a recognition consistent with the spirit of the Peace Agreement.
“They are clearly reprehensible acts, crimes against humanity that they should never have committed, but there is courage in their recognition,” Villarraga concluded.
Now it will be the task of the JEP and the Truth Commission to fully clarify these facts, to contrast the evidence presented by the ex-guerrillas and to tell the country what really happened with these murders. n
[ad_2]
