'False positives' must not be tried in military courts: UN

[Judi Lynn]

'False positives' must not be tried in military courts: UN
Monday, 30 May 2011 10:48
Tom Heyden

False positive" cases should be processed through regular courts and not through the military justice system, said Christian Salazar, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, La FM reported Monday.

Salazar said that for the purpose of transparency, the some 500 "false positive" cases should be tried in the regular justice system.

"We have been informed that there are at least 500 cases of deaths in combat that are presenting complaints in the military courts for extrajudicial execution. We therefore recommend that these cases are transferred immediately to the regular courts for their investigation," he said.

"We also recommend creating an independent commission that revises the cases of deaths in combat," the U.N. official added.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/16615-false-positives-must-not-be-tried-in-military-courts-un.html

[gbscar]

1. Absolutely. The Colombian military challenges the jurisdiction of civilian courts...

...in order to ensure that their abuses and crimes will be left in complete impunity. The United Nations is more than justified in making this demand, particularly considering it is also in line with Colombian law.

The military says that "acts of service" must be judged by military courts but, once again, civilian courts have already ruled more than once that human rights abuses and murders aren't an "act of service" no matter how much certain people would like to insist they are. Therefore, those cases must be sent to the civilian juridisction.

Though obviously quite grudgingly, there had been some progress in this respect as a result of the actual outbreak of the scandal in late 2008, but this slowed down after mid-2009 or so (ironically enough, after Santos left the Defense Ministry). Now we are seeing military judges and prosecutors insist that they have jurisdiction over many human rights cases using the rationale I referenced above, which is disgustingly effective even when it is ultimately overruled because it slows everything down and promotes impunity.

That's not to say impunity doesn't exist in civilian courts, both as a result of intimidation, murder and simple exhaustion due to a huge backlog of cases, but at the very least there's a shred of independence, as demonstrated by (among other examples) the historic sentences against Colonel Plazas and General Arias for the 1985 Palace of Justice disappearances, as opposed to the complete and utter darkness you will usually find when military judges are predisposed to absolve their own.

Needless to say, the likes of Uribe & co. have been very big fans of accusing judges of being "terrorists" for daring to rule against the military. It is absolutely necessary to continue to put pressure on the current Colombian government.