Due to the deforestation of native forests in Vichada, they dictate insurance measure against four people

On Tuesday, April 12, the Attorney General's Office announced that a judge from the municipality of Cumarimbo, Vichada, issued an assurance measure against four individuals who had been charged with crimes against the environment that had been committed in this department in the Colombian Amazon.

This measure of restrictive assurance of liberty was issued by the judge against Marcos Pónare González, Leonardo Caribán, Ángel Pónare Caribán and Carlos Alberto Gaitan Gaitan, who allegedly committed crimes of deforestation in successive heterogeneous competition with damage to natural resources and ecocide and concert to commit crimes, in this town in the south of the country.

“According to the investigations, the actions of the captured were systematic and did not respond to the victims' requests not to continue large-scale deforestation,” said the Prosecutor's Office, which explained that these subjects had burned and knocked down large areas of native forests “affecting water bodies, flora, fauna and in general natural resources”.

According to the allegations of the victims of these violations against natural resources and the environment, those captured have been committing these crimes since January 2013, that is, 9 years ago, in which they affected more than 25 hectares that would belong to the La Envidia and La Libertad farms located in the village La Malicia, a rural area of municipality of Cumaribo, in the Colombian Amazon.

The Prosecutor's Office also indicated that the persons arrested, although they did not accept the crimes committed against them by the judge who legalized the proceedings of voluntary searches and arrests, were sheltered by means of insurance outside the walls, however, the judge granted this measure in a “special indigenous house that they have for these cases, respecting the cosmology, culture and customs of the indigenous communities of the department”.

The Attorney General's Office warned, on March 31, that the figures of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon are alarming and urgent measures are required to guarantee the protection, conservation and recovery of native forests that have been threatened by various illegal activities.

This was alerted by the Attorney General of the Nation, Margarita Cabello, in the middle of the “National Table to Combat Deforestation in the Amazon Region”, in which she assured that despite institutional efforts to curb deforestation in this important strategic ecosystem, there are shortcomings in the articulation of measures by part of State institutions and their implementation in the territories.

“The Colombian Amazon is an ecological treasure that is threatened by increasing deforestation. The numbers are worrying and force us to act immediately. We cannot allow our children to be living in the midst of a scenario of illegal activities that daily destroy our natural resources,” said the prosecutor during her intervention in this space, to which 30 national and departmental entities were summoned.

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