US embassy cable - 05BOGOTA2566

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BOGOTA 002566 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/17/2015 
TAGS: PTER, KJUS, PHUM, CO, Demobilization, AUC 
SUBJECT: AUC REJECTS LAW FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE 
 
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 AUC publicly rejected the GOC's draft Law for 
Justice and Peace on March 15.  They complained it did not 
provide genuine reinsertion benefits, generated too much 
legal uncertainty, should be a statutory law, and imposed 
unfair prison sentences.  In response, the House and Senate 
first committees rejected a proposal to make the law 
statutory.  The Senate committee rejected a proposal to allow 
the AUC to present its views to Congress, but the House 
committee approved it.  The AUC will continue to try to 
influence the outcome of the law, especially when it is 
debated in the plenary, where AUC influence is greater.  End 
summary. 
 
2. (U) On March 15, the leadership of the United Self Defense 
Forces of Colombia (AUC) issued a communique addressed to 
Congress rejecting the GOC's draft Law for Justice and Peace. 
 They claim that: 
 
-- The AUC was formed in part from a failed demobilization of 
illegal self-defense forces in Magdalena and Cordoba 
Departments in the early 1990s.  They warn that the GOC's 
draft law would repeat the same mistakes as the earlier 
demobilization by focusing too much on punishment and 
disarmament instead of providing reinsertion and 
re-socialization services. 
 
-- The law generates too much legal uncertainty for 
beneficiaries. 
 
-- It should be statutory rather than ordinary legislation 
and therefore cannot be debated in extraordinary session. 
 
-- The five to eight year mandatory time in confinement is 
really not an alternative sentence because it is equivalent 
to what an ordinary criminal sentenced to 40 years would 
serve after reducing his sentence with good behavior, 
studying, working, and other reductions permitted in the 
criminal code.  They specify that they are willing to accept 
a law that requires a longer period of confinement, but only 
if they can reduce it through all options available in the 
criminal code. 
 
-- The law is specifically designed to punish the AUC because 
it only applies to groups that demobilize before the law is 
finalized, which they say would be around the end of May. 
They said it was not believable that the country's guerrilla 
groups would enter in a peace process before that time. 
 
3. (C) The communique does not directly threaten to break off 
talks if the draft law passes.  However, since public debate 
on the demobilization laws began in earnest in February, 
negotiations have been on hold.  Restrepo's staff has said 
they do not expect another bloc to demobilize until the law 
is finalized.  OAS verification mission chief was in Cordoba 
last week in part to determine why talks had stalled. 
 
4. (SBU) In reaction to the communique, Senator Dario 
Martinez (who has been highly critical of the GOC's draft 
law) proposed delaying the debate and making the law 
statutory.  On March 15, both the Senate and House first 
committees rejected the proposal.  On the same day, 
Representative Rocio Arias (who is an outspoken proponent of 
the AUC) proposed inviting the AUC to present their views to 
Congress.  The Senate committee rejected the proposal, but 
the House committee approved it. 
 
5. (C) This will not be the last time the AUC tries to 
influence the outcome and insert itself into the debate. 
Their pressure will likely increase when the law reaches the 
full House and Senate, where there are more members 
sympathetic to the AUC. 
 
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Unofficial Translation: 
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Honorable Congressmen: We request to speak. 
A brief reminder about the demobilizations of self-defense 
forces in Magdalena and Cordoba, carried out at the beginning 
of the 1990s, illustrates how processes of subjugation to 
justice end up plunging the country into a vicious circle of 
recurring violence.  Especially when it has to do with armed 
organizations that have not been defeated militarily. 
 
There is no doubt that when we accepted the government's 
invitation to hold political negotiations about peace we were 
committed to contributing to the deactivation of the war 
through a process of demobilization, disarmament, and 
reinsertion that would definitively eliminate paramilitarism 
as a player in the armed confrontation.  For this reason, the 
current negotiation cannot be reduced to simply taking apart 
the self-defense forces structures and counting weapons. 
This has to be a genuine process that, on one hand, 
facilitates reinsertion to productive life for thousands of 
combatants and, on the other hand, generates in the abandoned 
regions a strong institutionalization, which would require 
the state to intervene in regional security, reactivate the 
economy, and invest in health, education, housing, basic 
public services, and productive employment.  This is what we 
will continue to count on. 
 
This is precisely what did not occur in Magdalena and 
Cordoba, where there was a process of subjugation to justice, 
which became nothing mora than a simple mathematical 
operation of counting weapons and militarily retaking 
territory.  Several years later, several self-defense 
strongholds that had avoided demobilization re-formed and 
expanded throughout national territory thanks to, among other 
reasons, the addition of hundreds of ex-combatants who had 
suffered from the government's failed demobilization.  This 
was how the AUC was born.  Like it or not, the AUC are sons 
of these irregular processes which led us to recuperate 
territory that had been neglected by the state in order to 
create conditions of social and economic order for hundreds 
of marginalized communities that were left with only two 
options: plant coca or landmines. 
 
We have repeatedly insisted on the political nature of 
negotiations, whose fundamental goal is to eliminate all the 
factors that make the AUC a "necessary" part of the armed 
conflict.  It is clear that this process of subjugation to 
justice, which they are attempting to impose on us, will not 
create the necessary economic and social conditions to allow 
an eventual and definitive end to paramilitarism. 
 
The bill that the government is discussing with the 
congressional committees lays out a legal framework for 
demobilizing and disarming several AUC structures, but lacks 
an effective mechanism for peace or reconciliation.  The 
result is that, from the political point of view, it is an 
overly unstable instrument to end paramilitarism.  That much 
is clear. 
 
In addition to its inability to establish peace, the bill 
generates all kinds of uncertainties about future juridical 
security.  It seems to us that the urgency surrounding the 
bill, led it to be ordinary legislation when, in our view, it 
should be statutory as it establishes criminal procedures, 
offers some legal benefits, denies the application of 
substitute prisons, restricts guarantees and rights, and 
outlines certain punishable conduct. 
 
Being a statutory bill, by constitutional mandate, it cannot 
be debated in extraordinary sessions at the President's 
orders.  Moreover, as a statutory law, it is officially 
controlled by the constitution, which would determine its 
constitutionality before it could be finalized.  This would 
not happen to ordinary laws, which instead could be declared 
unconstitutional two or three years after being passed.  We 
consider the constitutionality of this future law to be the 
first threat against the current peace process.  It would put 
demobilized combatants in serious danger. 
 
At the same time, it is necessary to address the distorted 
and vicious view that some furious enemies of the peace 
process have publicized in the media that there is a high 
level of impunity in the level of punishments established by 
consensus in the Presidential Palace.  We must say that a 
term in confinement, estimated to be between five and eight 
years, exempt from benefits granted by ordinary laws that 
apply to all Colombians, ends up being almost equal to what a 
criminal sentenced to forty years in jail, who is subject to 
all the reductions allowed under normal law, would serve. 
Moreover, the said criminal would not have to confess, be 
economically ruined, or ask for public pardon. 
 
Given the way things are, from the penal point of view, it 
would be easier to curtail the sentence for the murderer 
Gavarito, accused of raping, killing, and chopping up more 
than twenty children, than for the AUC members, who are 
disposed to voluntarily turn in more than 18,000 guns and 
combatants, after many years of being obliged to take up arms 
in the face of a indolent and resigned state. 
 
In effect, according to the framework of the current 
accusatorial system, a person given a sentence of forty years 
in prison can reduce the penalty to up to fifty percent by 
plea bargaining and voluntarily accepting charges.  So, we 
would be talking about twenty years in prison.  This would be 
reduced to twelve years by conditional liberty (parole). 
Then the prisoner could work, study, or teach, for which the 
Prison Code allows reductions of four months per year.  This 
would make the sentence nine years. 
 
We would be disposed to accept a discrete increase in the 
sentences contemplated in the bill in exchange having the 
reduction benefits that the criminal codes grant to all 
convicts.  Let us look, for example, at the case of the 
rendition of punishments: if the central goal of the 
punishment is re-socialization, we do not understand how 
re-socialization would be possible if we are deprived of a 
reason to work, study, or teach. 
 
Returning to the bill, in terms of its efficacy as an 
instrument for peace, the government has said that it would 
apply to all illegal armed groups that demobilize and work 
for national peace.  However, the time frame of when the law 
would be in force negates the concept of universality that 
the government attempted to establish.  Article 65 
established that the law would apply only to actions taken 
after the law goes into effect. 
 
This means that if the so-called justice and peace law goes 
into effect on May 31, its "benefits," exemptions, and 
prerogatives, would only cover actions taken before this 
date.  It is certainly unlikely that the FARC, ELN, and other 
self-defense forces not participating in the peace process, 
will take actions to open a peace process with the government 
before May 31.  In other words, if the FARC were to decide to 
start a peace process in the next four or five years, they 
would have to stop committing crimes and renounce all 
criminal activity by May 31 if they want to benefit from this 
law.  No one believes this will happen. 
 
In conclusion, this bill was deliberately designed for only 
one of the actors in Colombia's conflict.  We do not doubt 
that if this initiative, with its supposed "universal" 
character, were also designed for the communist guerrillas, 
it would not have time in confinement, individual trials, 
confessions converted into denunciations by the dangerous 
concept of "collaboration with justice," legal insecurity, 
special tribunals, denial and restriction of guarantees and 
rights, and seizure of assets that were acquired licitly. 
More importantly, it would be free from criticism of the 
hypocritical spokesmen of a new morality who have turned the 
concept of peace into intrigue, vengeance, and politicking. 
 
Santa Fe de Ralito, March 15, 2005. 
 
Central Staff. 
 
Ramon Isaza 
General Commander of the AUC 
 
Ernesto Baez de al Serna 
Political Director of the AUC 
 
Julian Bolivar 
Chief of the AUC Negotiating Staff 
 
 
 
WOOD