JEP will take over the process of former Uribe security chief Mauricio Santoyo

The Attorney General's Office announced Thursday that it will refer the case against General Mauricio Alfonso Santoyo Velasco to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). The defendant is known to have been the head of security of former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez during 2002 and 2005 and is accused of the crimes of illicit enrichment of public servants and money laundering.

The investigating body explained that the evidence and evidence obtained against the former officer will also be transferred to the JEP. The entity will have to assume “the judicial proceedings that fall within its competence,” the Prosecutor's Office said in a press release.

The referral of the case comes after on September 7, 2021, the Jurisdiction accepted Santoyo's application for submission to the Transitional System. In fact, the JEP published at that time the resolution in which the General (r) claims that he provided information to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) while he was an active member of the National Police and direct of the Gaula de Medellín between 1999 and 2009.

“According to the foregoing, it is noted then that Mr. Santoyo Velasco participated actively in the alliance that existed between the AUC and members of the security forces,” the document published by the JEP reads. In the framework of this, he provided information to this illegal armed group receiving as consideration a sum of money.”

The Prosecutor's Office points out that during that time Santoyo constituted an estate of 6,193′415,576 pesos which, in part, “would be the product of monies it would have received from demobilized self-defense groups”. The investigating body also obtained evidence that, allegedly, the former head of security “received money to allow him to release members of these structures and alert them to the movements and operations of the security forces,” he added.

It should be recalled that the general (r) was part of the National Police for 30 years, from which he retired in June 2009. The Attorney General's Office points out that, before he was extradited to the United States, the officer voluntarily accepted that he participated in the “interception of telephone lines”, in his capacity as “commander of the Gaula Urbano of Medellín, in order for paramilitarism to carry out its operations”.

With regard to his extradition, Santoyo was sentenced in 2012 to 13 years in prison in the United States and to a fine of $125,000 for maintaining links with paramilitaries and collaborating with drug traffickers. He served a sentence until 2019, when he returned to the country, but upon his arrival at El Dorado airport, in Bogotá, he was captured by Colombian authorities.

On April 26, 2019, the Prosecutor's Office imposed an assurance measure on General (r) Santoyo as the perpetrator of the above-mentioned crimes, a measure that was notified and executed on April 29, 2019, the day he arrived from the United States.

On March 24, 2021, a prosecutor delegated to the Supreme Court of Justice issued an indictment, under Law 600 of 2000, against the retired general. The official left the assurance measure that Santoyo had, consisting of pre-trial detention, firm. “These determinations were confirmed by the office of the Deputy Attorney General of the Nation, which denied the appeal filed by the defense,” said the investigating body.

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