Alirio Uribe, from the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective, offers legal aid to more than 200 victims who are struggling to obtain truth, justice and reparation in the trials of paramilitary leaders under Law 975. In this interview, he highlights some of the problems faced in guaranteeing the participation and protection of victims during these hearings.

For a lawyer such as yourself, who has spent years representing victims in the ordinary judicial system, what is your experience of accompanying victims during their participation in the paramilitary trials under Law 975?

For the Lawyers’ Collective the process is really frustrating. On the one hand there have been limits on victims participating in the trials because only one person per family is allowed in. The victims have been badly treated because in many trials they have had to pass through demonstrations organised by the paramilitaries, where they have felt threatened, and have even seen armed people among the demonstrators. It is believed that at least 17 victims who tried to take part in the process have been assassinated. They do not have equal access to the trials, because they have no information on how the law works, and they have no financial support.

In what way can the victims take part in the hearings?

The victims’ participation is very precarious. They are in a separate room where the trial is transmitted over a bad TV signal, and sometimes the sound is terrible too. The victims have to fill in questionnaires in order to ask questions about their cases. The methodology of the trials is appalling. The Attorney General’s Office designs the questions but often they are poorly drafted or incomplete. On the other hand, many victims have been offended during the hearings. For example, one woman who went to ask about her disappeared daughter was told by ‘Jorge 40’ that she probably ran off with a guerrilla commander or a paramilitary. Often the paramilitaries say they assassinated someone because he was a terrorist, guerrilla or delinquent.

Could you explain more about the risks victims face in participating?

Some victims have received threatening phone calls before or after taking part in a hearing, or suspicious people have approached them and told them not to go to the so called Justice and Peace Trials, or that if they go to the hearings the same thing will happen to them as happened to their family members.  What should the State do in order to guarantee victims’ participation? Firstly what they should have done is publish lists and photos of all the demobilised paramilitaries. That would have genuinely contributed to the truth process. Also, the victims have not had adequate legal assistance, because there are no state lawyers assigned to them. And although the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office has assigned staff, they have only helped the victims to word their questions during the trials. We believe that the lists of victims participating in the hearings have been passed to paramilitaries. If not, how is it that the families who went to ‘Jorge 40’’s trial have been threatened in Ibague, Bogota, Bucaramanga, Cucuta, Santa Marta, Valledupar and Villavicencio?

What does the Lawyers’ Collective propose?

That there should be protection programmes, that the victims be offered psychosocial support, that they be given access to programmes offering real information, and that they be guaranteed financial support to attend the trials. The Government should adhere to the sentence of Supreme Court of Justice, which states that paramilitaries are not political prisoners. All the paramilitaries should be re-tried for grave offences. There should be guarantees so that the bodies of the disappeared are returned to their families, and properties and lands returned to the displaced population.

Do you feel that any truth has been uncovered in this process?

Quite honestly more truth has come out in processes parallel to this one. For example, what has happened in the Supreme Court of Justice in terms of para-politics, where historic findings came to light because the Supreme Court had the political will to investigate. The huge truth process has come about because the media have reported all these crimes and this whole dirty war, which involves civilian and military state authorities. 

What should be role of the international community in all this?  

Firstly the international community should not support the paramilitary demobilisation process. There are some 70 paramilitary groups active in 23 regions. They were there before, they are there now, and they will be there in the future, supported by civilian and military authorities, by politicians, by parliamentarians… The international community should once again demand that the State dismantle these groups, and they should condition all cooperation on Law 975 adhering to the principles of truth, justice and reparation.