US embassy cable - 05BOGOTA431

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BOGOTA 000431 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/13/2015 
TAGS: PHUM, PTER, KJUS, PINR, CO, Human Rts 
SUBJECT: FISCALIA CLOSES CHENGUE MASSACRE CASE AGAINST 
RETIRED ADMIRAL QUINONEZ 
 
REF: A. 01 BOGOTA 8188 
     B. 01 BOGOTA 2647 
     C. 02 BOGOTA 1349 
     D. 02 STATE 65982 
 
Classified By: Ambassador William B. Wood for reasons 1.4 (b) 
and (d). 
 
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Summary 
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1. (C) The Fiscalia announced it has closed its criminal case 
against retired Rear Admiral Rodrigo Quinonez for his alleged 
complicity in the January 2001 paramilitary massacre at 
Chengue.  The head of the Fiscalia's Human Rights Unit told 
Embassy officials that Quinonez's case was handled by a 
special Supreme Court Prosecutor who decided to close it 
because of lack of justiciable evidence.  In 2003, the 
Procuraduria had ordered that Quinonez and four others be 
dismissed from the armed forces for their alleged involvement 
in the atrocity.  Differing standards of proof in 
administrative and criminal processes accounted, at least in 
part, for the conflicting rulings.  End Summary. 
 
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Background 
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2. (C) On January 7, the Office of the Prosecutor General 
("Fiscalia") announced it had closed its investigation of 
retired Rear Admiral Rodrigo Quinonez for suspected 
complicity in the January 2001 paramilitary massacre in the 
village of Chengue, Sucre Department, where paramilitaries 
used large stones and machetes to kill 27 unarmed civilians. 
Quinonez, who commanded the Colombian Navy's First Brigade at 
the time, had been charged with dereliction of duty 
("omission") for allegedly doing nothing to prevent the 
massacre after he was alerted that it might take place. 
Several soldiers under Quinonez's command were charged with 
facilitating the atrocity by providing paramilitaries with 
intelligence and equipment. 
 
3. (C) The criminal investigation of the Chengue massacre was 
flawed from the start and marred by threats and violence. 
The Fiscalia's Human Rights Unit lacked a regional presence 
at the time, creating delays in the initial inquiry and 
complicating the long, drawn-out investigation.   Many 
elements of the Colombian military were less than 
cooperative, and parallel investigations of several other 
large-scale paramilitary massacres put significant strains on 
the Unit's resources and personnel.  Two members of the 
Fiscalia's Corps of Technical Investigators (CTI) -- the 
Fiscalia's in-house detective force -- disappeared while 
working undercover on the case in April 2001, and are 
presumed dead.  A third CTI investigator working on the case 
was murdered in February 2002.  In August 2001, suspected 
paramilitaries murdered the senior prosecutor in charge of 
the case in front of her home in the departmental capital of 
Sincelejo.  The investigation was also plagued by allegations 
evidence tampering, threats against witnesses, and suspected 
paramilitary infiltration of the Sincelejo prosecutor's 
office. 
 
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Inspector General's Office Sanctions Quinonez 
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4. (C) On December 16, 2003, the Inspector General's Office 
("Procuraduria") -- which has the power to impose 
administrative, but not criminal, sanctions -- ordered that 
Quinonez, Captains Oscar Eduardo Saavedra and Camilo 
Martinez, and Sergeants Euclides Bossa and Ruben Dario Rojas 
be dismissed from the armed forces for their responsibility 
for events at Chengue.  The Procuraduria ruled that Quinonez, 
Saavedra, and Martinez failed to take appropriate measures to 
prevent the massacre after local police alerted their command 
to the presence of paramilitaries in the area.  Bossa and 
Rojas were dismissed for providing the paramilitaries with 
weapons and helping them recruit guerrilla deserters.  All 
five were prohibited from holding public offices for a period 
of five years and banned from access to military facilities. 
The dismissals and additional sanctions were confirmed on 
internal appeal in September 2004.  Quinonez had already been 
"severely reprimanded" by the Procuraduria in the 1990s for 
allegedly directing anti-communist death squads in the 
Santander Department river port city of Barrancabermeja, then 
dominated by the National Liberation Army (ELN).  A military 
tribunal ruled Quinonez was not criminally responsible for 
those alleged offenses. 
 
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Meeting with Fiscalia 
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5. (C) On January 13, Embassy officials met with Elba Beatriz 
Silva, current director of the Human Rights Unit, who 
explained that although the Unit investigated the Chengue 
case, Quinonez's rank required that he be prosecuted by one 
of the Fiscalia's special Supreme Court Prosecutors 
("Fiscales Delegados ante la Corte"), who handle cases in 
which the Supreme Court has primary jurisdiction.  According 
to Silva, the senior prosecutor decided to drop the case 
against Quinonez for lack of sufficient evidence to achieve a 
criminal conviction.  Silva said this was a result of paucity 
of witnesses willing to testify, the disappearance of other 
witnesses, and the murders of various investigators. 
Verdicts of "not guilty" in several Chengue-related 
prosecutions advanced by the Human Rights Unit also 
undermined the case against Quinonez.  Prosecutor General 
Luis Camilo Osorio personally signed off on the Supreme Court 
Prosecutor's decision. 
 
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Different Standards of Proof 
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6. (C) Despite working from the same evidence, the Fiscalia 
and the Procuraduria came to different conclusions because 
they were imposing distinct legal provisions with different 
standards of proof.  The Procuraduria is able sanction 
individuals administratively -- with dismissal as the most 
drastic sanction -- on the basis of far less evidence and 
certainly less than the Fiscalia needs to prove a criminal 
violation.  For example, in the Quinonez case, the Fiscalia 
had to prove to the rough equivalent of the U.S. "beyond a 
reasonable doubt" standard that Quinonez knew of the 
impending massacre.  The Procuraduria, on the other hand, 
only needed to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence 
that Quinonez "should have known" about the risk of a 
massacre.  The Procuraduria did not have to prove that 
Quinonez actually did know of the risk of a massacre. 
WOOD