Identified the ninth victim of enforced disappearance in the Montes de María

This Wednesday, March 16, entities of the Integral System for Peace and the Colombian State, carried out the dignified delivery of the remains of Andrés Julio Herazo, a renowned bullfighter from the corralejas in the municipality of San Onofre, Sucre, who had been reported missing 19 years ago when he was forcibly removed from the patron saint's festivities.

In a work articulated between the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the Unit for the Search for Persons Disappeared (UBPD), the Attorney General's Office and the Victims Unit, Herazo was found, who acts as the ninth victim identified in this town of Los Montes de María, one of the most affected by the armed conflict in the country.

“The Search Unit must guarantee the truth about the fate of missing persons and, where possible, their whereabouts. Surely, in many cases we will not be able to determine the whereabouts despite all the purpose, technology and methodology. But what society and the victims do need to know is what was the fate of the disappeared persons, and that is the goodness of this Regional Search Plan, which allows us to read what happened to those people as a whole,” said the entity's director, Luz Marina Monzón.

The identification of the farmer, aged 40, took place within the framework of the precautionary measures adopted by the JEP Non-Recognition Section for the purpose of protecting four places of forensic interest in San Onofre, including the Municipal and Rincón del Mar cemeteries, as well as the El Palmar and La Alemania estates, where other bodies of victims of enforced disappearance could be found.

As was known to the entities of the Integral System for Peace, on March 19, 2003, while Herazo was in the corralejas of the village of Berrugas, armed men forcibly removed him from the town's festivities to take him to Hacienda El Palmar without news of him being released again, however, in 2005 he took carried out the exhumation of his remains, after one of the postulates of Justice and Peace delivered information on victims of enforced disappearance in this region.

“Today Mariana's question to the river ceases. H oy can finally stop wondering 'where are you little brother? ' From now on she and her other relatives will be able to go to their place of rest so that this time it is he who keeps their secrets for them,” said the transitional justice magistrate, Alejandro Ramelli, during the delivery.

For its part, the UBPD, through its Internal Territorial Working Group Sincelejo, held comprehensive seminars in this municipality in the Colombian Caribbean, which allowed the collection of family samples of victims of this crime against humanity, as well as the collection of testimonies that would allow the identification of the bodies, thus making it possible to obtain managed to register Herazo.

The entity also indicated that, together with social organizations and family organizations of victims, it is advancing in the Regional Search Plan Montes de María y Morrosquillo, through which 1,734 missing persons are searched for in the 17 municipalities of Bolívar and Sucre that make up this region amid events related to the armed conflict between 1948 and 2016.

“A young miner, a fruit vendor on Tulueña beach, a Sanonofrino peasant, a bicycle rider, a young man who brought gallons of water to the town and a welder were the first victims handed over to their families last August 2021 in Sucre,” the JEP concluded.

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