The Itagüí prison is the center of total peace for Petro

On January 18, a dialogue table for total peace will be set up in the Itagüí maximum security prison. It will be made up of various crime bosses from Valle de Aburrá who arrived at the prison in the last days of December.

The entire movement was made by the office of the High Commissioner for Peace. José Leonardo Muñoz Martínez, alias Douglas; Juan Carlos Mesa Vallejo, aka Tom; and Albert Antonio Henao Acevedo, alias Albert, who at the time were the strong men of the Oficina de Envigado and the latter was the boss of the Pachelly gang. The three of them can summarize the narco that prevails in the Aburrá Valley.

It is expected that another 16 capos will arrive in Itagüí this week from more prisons in the country, thus the table with which President Gustavo Petro wants to bring peace to Medellín would be ready. All these movements have been done with the utmost secrecy, in large trucks and with the consent of supposed social leaders. The secrecy and the back and forth letters have brought a strange illusion for the capos: they believe that they can be released, supposedly it has been a promise that has come to them directly from the links they have with the Government.

Apparently, various bosses have been told regarding having the benefit of the freedom to negotiate peace under Decree 1081 of 2015. This is the same Decree with which the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, asked the prosecutor Francisco Barbosa to lift the arrest warrants for 16 criminals from the Clan del Golfo and Los Pachenca – a gang that controls illicit businesses in Santa Marta and the Sierra Nevada – a request that was flatly denied.

Regarding the Prosecutor’s refusal, in a more than obvious move because no one would give political status to groups proven to be dedicated to drug trafficking and extortion, Minister Alfonso Prada had nothing more to say than say that they respect the autonomy of the powers and that they will continue in the search for peace “with the organizations to which political status is recognized and with conversations with high-impact, armed and criminal structures that move in the illegal economy with a view to advancing in this process of submission.”

The most delicate issue in this story that has been brewing in the prisons since the days of the presidential campaign is that in the corridors of the La Picota prison – in Bogotá – it is rumored that various bosses have allegedly been asked for a lot of money to the management of peace, procedures that would include the lifting of arrest warrants. The truth is that even the extraditables have been in communication with the Casa de Nariño to ask for clues and, above all, not to send them to the United States.

In November, representatives of the National Government installed the Peace Human Rights Roundtable in La Picota under resolution 046 of 2022 issued by the High Commissioner for Peace in order to assess the intentions of the gangs; The table has gone unsuspected during this time and it was a master move, since in this way the Government entered into dialogues with those who have promoted the drug trafficking business and those who continue in one way or another with power within the criminal structures.

Right in the first days of December, a group of extraditables sent a letter to Petro putting at his service the “positive leadership” they had in the territories and asking him to suspend his shipment to the United States, days later Álvaro’s extradition was signed Córdoba, brother of Senator Piedad Córdoba. The defense of the latter, captured in February 2022 in Medellín, wanted to stop the process with a guardianship before the Council of State, but it was recently denied and his transfer to an American prison was confirmed..

The fact is that the authorization of that extradition left a distaste in the extraditables, who say that they have helped move the intentions of the Government in the streets, but they have not received any gesture of peace. The point is that stopping extraditions has incalculable political weight for the government.

This entire prison operation has been headed by the brother of the President of the Republic, Juan Fernando Petro –as he revealed during the Noticias Caracol campaign–, by the high commissioner Danilo Rueda and by the lawyer Pedro Niño. The three have a shared past in the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace, and in the Latin American Commission on Human Rights.

Petro, Rueda and Niño managed to push aside the lawyer Daniel Prado, who worked in alliance with the Nuevo Arco Iris Corporation and had advanced contacts in cities like Cali and Medellín for several years. For some, the departure of Prado – who had already confirmed the peace movement in Medellín revealed by EL COLOMBIANO – is due to the fact that President Petro wants to involve the church in the entire process; They even assure that it was a commitment that he acquired with Pope Francis during his visit to the Vatican last year.

But the issue goes beyond faith. While Daniel Prado worked in line with the acceptance of justice by criminal gangs and armed groups, without the need for any political recognition, an idea that was rejected in full by jurists and a senator, the triumvirate that is now coming from the Casa de Nariño has only one big bet: peace with the ELN.

In that negotiation with the ELN they would give a certain political status to other armed groups, they would enter into one of the points of the negotiation. Says a source close to the debate: “They (the government) highly value the contribution of the church, and that is why they are playing with the ELN, but the drug traffickers themselves say that this guerrilla rattles like everyone else, so they also claim political status.”

Said status would open the doors to an expedited negotiation, because President Petro does not want to waste his entire mandate in this negotiation, thus eliminating the theory of recourse to justice and expunging guilt as if it were a guerrilla. The issue is that several advisors have already warned that by handing over that political status, the same thing might happen as Justice and Peace, where dozens of drug traffickers slipped in as paramilitaries to lighten their sentences. A troubling issue: no boss has talked regarding drug legalization, let alone delivering business.

the local landscape

But let’s go back to Medellín, where divisions are also brewing.

One of the lawyers who has the blessing of the High Commissioner for Peace is Edison López, attorney for Juan Carlos Castro, alias Pichi, through which he came to represent alias Douglas, who truly is a strong voice from the jail to talk regarding crime in eastern Medellín, exactly in Manrique and the La Terraza gang. What worries leaders who know the process is that it would only represent 20 percent of crime.

The appearance of the lawyer López on the scene has been resounding, it is said that he knows the mayor Daniel Quintero because they grew up in the Tricentenario neighborhood, and that this role was also vital in finding open doors in the Casa de Nariño. However, it is all speculation. What is certain is that he is playing with the leading role of Douglas, which would leave out important bands from Valle de Aburrá such as Los Triana, Los Mondongueros and some Robledo combos.

On the scene suddenly appeared Mauricio Alberto González Sepúlveda, alias El Ronco, a former AUC paramilitary and an old boss of the Oficina, who was released from prison in September 2017 due to the expiration of his terms and since then has remained in prison. the shadows. El Ronco would be the key for the peace agreements to go down “to the boys”, to the men of the gangs that devastate Medellín.

The cards will be uncovered in the coming weeks with the installation of the table in the Itagüí prison and with some criminal movements, gestures of supposed goodwill that might range from changing drug outlets in places like parks and schools, to gestures of peace such as those experienced by the city in October and November of last year.

The problem is that in prisons they also perceive the same thing as in the street: total peace seems like a thread of pure improvisation.

18

January will be the day that the total peace dialogue table will be installed in the Itagüí prison.