Colombia military court bill ‘recipe for impunity’: HRW

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia military court bill ‘recipe for impunity’: HRW
Jul 9, 2014 posted by Daniel Medendorp Escobar

Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed its concern with a bill that would transfer cases dealing with the military and human rights abuses from civilian courts to military courts in an open letter to Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon.

The letter, signed by HRW Latin America director Jose Vivanco to the Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon criticized Senate Bill-85, 2013 that would transfer crimes against humanity committed by members of the military from civilian courts to military courts, on the basis that it would “open the door to unlawful killings known as ‘false positives.’”

The so-called “false positives” scandal is centered around the extrajudicial killings of thousands of civilians by members of the armed forces who presented their victims as guerrillas in order to claim them as combat kills.

Vivanco claims that a military tribunal for members of the military is a “recipe for impunity,” especially since the bill includes crimes such as illegal interceptions, illegal arms trafficking, as well as “conspiring with paramilitaries to commit crimes such as torture, forced disappearances and drug trafficking.”

More:
http://colombiareports.co/hrw-expresses-concern-colombia-bill-transferring-military/

[Judi Lynn]

1. More on this wildly bad idea, from the article:

According to Vivanco, the military courts are ineffective based on a ruling by the Inter-American court in 2012, which ruled that the Colombian military courts are “not the competent system of justice to investigate and, as appropriate, prosecute and punish the authors of human rights violations.”

HRW stated in the letter that there have been false positive cases correctly punished by civilian courts, but not under military courts.

“The Colombian government has claimed it is necessary to expand the scope of the military justice system because civilian prosecutors have baselessly prosecuted soldiers for legitimately killing guerrillas in combat. However, the government has failed to provide a single example of such unfounded prosecutions, despite multiple requests by Human Rights Watch,” claimed Vivanco.

The Colombian Supreme Court shot down a similar bill in 2013 for procedural reasons. The Court’s 5-4 ruling prevented a military justice reform amendment to Colombia’s Constitution that would have allowed military courts to try their own people for all but seven crimes that constitute crimes against humanity. The seven would have been the only crimes tried in civilian court.