“A new slap in the face of the victims”: Bogotá councilman denounces that US money would benefit Esmad

From his Twitter account, Green Party Councillor Diego Cancino denounced that part of the $471.3 million of announced aid from the US government would be used to finance Esmad.

This is the tweet:

In Pulzo, the councilman expanded his complaint and said:

“It's a capital gravity. Minister Molano said that this money will strengthen security; it is actually aimed at Esmad: a mobile squad, which is not made to guarantee protest, which is not an anti-riot police, but what it actually does is violate and eliminate the protest.” In addition, he pointed out that “giving greater funding to an entity that was previously burning the protest is to give it even more gasoline. If what happened was happening before, imagine now.”

It is worth recalling that on March 16, when the approval of the US government aid package for Colombia was announced, it was also known that, after the conciliation process of the text approved in the United States House and Senate, some provisions that were submitted by some sectors of the Lower House were left out.

According to information from RCN Radio, the Colombian Embassy said that “provisions that were detrimental to Colombia's security interests and the prestige of the Colombian National Police and Armed Forces were excluded from the final text of the Law.”

This means that in this Law, the funds given to Colombia will be handed over without prohibiting assistance to Esmad. Nor would there be a “negative report on the military retired from Colombia, as a result of what happened with the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.”

However, it is also important to remember that on May 7, 2021, two representatives of the lower house of the United States Congress asked to implement the Leahy amendment for systematic human rights violations in which Esmad was involved. This rule protects that the resources of US taxpayers are not given to military entities that are involved in such situations.

For the alleged illegitimate use of force in demonstrations on June 21, 2021, in which Jaime Alfonso Fandiño Ariza, who was hit by tear gas in his chest, died, the Attorney General's Office summoned a National Police patrolman to a public hearing to try.

The Public Prosecutor's Office announced that the uniformed, who is part of the first section of Esmad No. 25, would not have observed the protocols and measures established in the procedures for handling demonstrations, a conduct that may have resulted in non-compliance with the rules on the legal use of legitimate force.

“The supervisory body recalled that the principles of proportionality, legality, necessity, must be applied when force is used, in the handling of weapons, elements, devices and in general for the control of riots and demonstrations,” said the Attorney General's Office in this case, adding to dozens of allegations of brutality in the midst of the social outbreak of the previous year.

The Second District Attorney's Office of Bogotá, which provisionally described the fault of the member of Esmad as very serious as a matter of malice, ordered the file to be sent to the Delegate Prosecutor's Office for Disciplinary Court.

Last June, the Attorney General's Office had announced the opening of a preliminary investigation against members of Esmad to investigate their alleged responsibility in the deaths of Cristian David Castillo and Jaime Alonso Fandiño, two citizens who died in Bogotá in the towns of Suba and Usme during the demonstrations social.

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