Washington D.C. March 22, 2010<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has<\/span><\/span> sufficient evidence <\/span><\/span>to declare the international responsibility of Colombia for the violation of human rights in the operation held by the army and the police to regain control of the Palace of Justice on November 6, <\/span>1985.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This was proved today at a hearing before the IACHR by the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), the Colectivo de Abogados “Jos\u00e9 Alvear Restrepo” (CAJAR), and the Commission for Justice and Peace (CIJP).<\/p>\n For petitioning organizations , the State of Colombia is responsible for the disappearance of 12 people, the torture of three, and the disappearance and extrajudicial execution of a Judge of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n The incident occurred in an operation by the police and army to retake the Palace of Justice, which had been violently occupied by the guerrilla group Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19), with over 300 people inside. The operation, in which force was used excessively and disproportionately, causing over 100 deaths.<\/p>\n Liliana Avila from CIJP said that \u201cnearly a quarter century after, the case of the Palace of Justice remains in total impunity. The government has not not adequately investigated the enforced disappearances, the torture, nor the extrajudicial killing of the magistrate judge”.<\/p>\n The organizations highlighted the findings of the Truth Commission on the facts of the Palace of Justice, prepared by the Supreme Court, which issued its final report in December, 2009.<\/p>\n According to the Truth Commission, there is no doubt that the missing persons (cafeteria employees and occasional visitors) entered the Palace of Justice the day of the incident, survived the operation for “retaking”, were arrested by agents of the State, designated as \u201cspecial hostages” with “arbitrary and superficial criteria\u201d and forcibly disappeared. Until this date, there is no knowledge of their whereabouts.<\/p>\n Also demonstrated by the Truth Commission, torture and cruel degrading treatment suffered by a student, a lawyer, and an employee of the state enterprises of Bogota, as well as the extrajudicial killing of Judge Carlos Horacio Ur<\/span><\/span>\u00e1n, who left the court alive with <\/span>non-fatal injuries and was executed by government agents.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The first complaint about the case before the IACHR was released in 1990, but until now there has been no response from the State. For the petitioning organizations, such conduct of the State “is consistent with its silence on internal level in reference to the requests for truth and justice by victims and their families.”<\/p>\n “Faced with allegations of procedure of the state, we want to draw the attention to the procedural conduct of the State which is absolutely made upon bad faith” said Viviana Krsticevic, executive director of CEJIL.<\/p>\n For Krsticevic, in 19 years of processing the case before the IACHR, the State has only submitted 19 pages of “precarious and insufficient” information.<\/p>\n Rafael Barrios, CAJAR lawyer, criticized that the State has not referred to the report of the Truth Commission, which confirmed the allegations of the petitioners, and recalled that the first serious research began 20 years after the fact, but so far not a single sentence has been given. Barrios has denied that 14 members of the military are in trial and added that six military defendants are in complete liberty because the State failed to beat the deadlines for processing.<\/p>\n The petitioning organizations asked the IACHR to “help break the pact of silence” by issuing a substantive report to establish the international responsibility of the Colombian state.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Press Contact: Mauricio Herrera. Director of Communications.<\/p>\n (202) 319-3000, (202) 445-46-76. mherrera@twi.btq.mybluehost.me.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) is an advocacy of human rights in the Americas. CEJIL’s main objective is to ensure full implementation of international human rights standards in the Member States of the Organization of American States (OAS), through the effective use of the Inter-american human rights system and other international protection mechanisms. CEJIL is a nongovernmental nonprofit with consultative status at the OAS, the Organization of the United Nations (UN) and observer status with the African Commission on Human Rights.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[],"class_list":["post-4059","comunicado-de-prensa","type-comunicado-de-prensa","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cejil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comunicado-de-prensa\/4059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cejil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comunicado-de-prensa"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cejil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/comunicado-de-prensa"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cejil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cejil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}