JEP will review the conviction of General (r) Jaime Humberto Uscátegui for the Mapiripan massacre

On Wednesday, April 6, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) reported that the request for review of the 37-year prison sentence against the General (r) of the National Army, Jaime Humberto Uscátegui, was accepted for “improper omission” he committed while paramilitary groups were perpetrating the massacre in Mapiripán, Meta, in 1997.

The Court of Peace Appeals Section gave the green light to the revision of the sentence handed down by the ordinary courts against the then commander of the Army's VII Brigade, revoking the decision taken by the Review Section on August 6, 2020, in which this application was rejected because it had no substantiated reasons for carry it out.

“While ordinary justice satisfies the interest of the individual allegedly aggrieved by the judicial decision, transitional justice is mainly aimed at obtaining the full truth, confronting the different accounts of the war. This contributes and contributes to the fulfillment of the rights of victims and society to truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition,” said the Appeals Section.

In order 1086, the Chamber warned that the “cause invoked by the representative of General Jaime Humberto Uscátegui” does not correspond to new evidence, but to a new legal fact, and the “12 pieces of evidence provided are intended to support his innocence” in the face of these acts that were attributed to the former commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), Carlos Castaño, in which it is estimated that about 60 people were killed and tortured.

In this regard, the transitional justice stated that it was important to specify that the decision to review the conviction does not imply the acquittal of the general, explaining that the conduct that was accused of “improper omission of aggravated homicides and simple kidnappings” could be analyzed in the light of the new constitutional regulations that were introduced with the Final Peace Agreement.

“The judge shall resolve the petition, based on an analysis of the evidentiary material with a high level of demonstration intensity that leads to a decisive decision, aimed at establishing the origin or otherwise of the new legal fact and the implications for transitional justice in relation to the specific case derive from the decision,” said the Appeals Section.

Finally, he indicated that once the review of the sentence of the former Army Commander has been admitted and given the impact that this decision may have, the Review Section must incorporate into the transitional review the “criminal file containing the orders, evidence and evidence that supported the conclusions of the conviction of the applicant, including the action taken at the seat of cassation”.

This would be the third attempt by the General (r) to have the peace court, repeatedly criticized by members of the security forces, review his sentence, the highest that had been imposed on a uniformed man of his rank and the maximum that ordinary justice contemplated at the time when it was imposed.

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