In an interview with Canal Caracol and Blu Radio, the colombian president Gustavo Petro ignited the controversy. This is because several of his statements seemed aimed at justifying -or at least attributing to the State and high-ranking former officials- the existence of the FARC dissidents, groups that betrayed the peace process and returned to drug trafficking. And that today they are at the gates of a negotiation with the new government.
The first comment by the head of state was directed at an alleged entrapment against alias Jesús Santrich to request his extradition from the United States. According to Petro, the process against Santrich (whose legality was endorsed by the Supreme Court in Colombia and the federal justice in the United States) was mediated by the then attorney general of the nation, Néstor Humberto Martínez.
The second statement was against former President Iván Duque, whom he pointed out to “build the FARC dissidents”, a comment that the former president rejected.
So did the former Minister of Defense of his government, Diego Molano. Through Twitter, he stated that Duque and his cabinet defended Colombians from the threat, violence and drug trafficking of dissidents.
The alleged trap against Santrich
«The cocaine from the entrapment was bought with money from the DEA, delivered by people from the DEA and received by them. It turned out to be a trap that has been confessed today. It is shown that there was a kind of trap to request them in the United States made by an attorney general of the nation. This is what Petro said in reference to the Santrich case.
That version is the same one that his foreign minister, Álvaro Leyva (friend of Santrich), had already put forward. And that also ended up being included in a controversial separate report from the Truth Commission.
Justice
However, the decisions of the Colombian justice do not support this thesis. The most important of them was the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice, which, when analyzing Santrich’s extradition request, considered it to be in accordance with the law and therefore endorsed it.
By that time, in May 2021, Santrich had already been on the run for three years, at the head of the dissidence created by alias Iván Márquez. A few weeks later, the former peace negotiator who returned to crime was murdered in his Venezuelan refuge.
“It emerges conclusively that the behaviors displayed by Seuxis Paucias Hernández Solarte (Santrich’s real name) constitute crimes both in Colombia and in the requesting country. And, in addition, in both normative systems the legislator ordered a minimum sentence of deprivation of liberty in an amount greater than four years. This is what the extradition ruling says, signed by the magistrates of the Criminal Chamber of the Court.
The request for drug trafficking
The United States justice requested Santrich for drug trafficking after undercover agents carried out an operation in which the controversial former head of the FARC agreed to make a drug deal with supposed envoys of the Sinaloa Cartel.
A similar covert action was carried out by the DEA against Álvaro Córdoba Ruiz, brother of the controversial senator of the Historical Pact Piedad Córdoba.
In this case, President Petro has already signed the extradition order, after the favorable opinion of the Court. However, the defense presented its last legal letter: the appeal for reconsideration.
Fiscal
At various times, former Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez denied that there was any entrapment. And he maintained that proof of this is that the aforementioned partners of Santrich were extradited and accepted charges before the federal justice system.
«Let us provide the testimony of the protagonists of the crime in question, today extradited and on trial in the United States, for which I am sure, we can count on the support of the American authorities, a definitive verdict is offered to the country, so that know, once and for all, who is right and if the negotiated cocaine, which gave rise to the extradition request for “Santrich”, came or not from the Prosecutor’s Office,” said former prosecutor Martínez in response to the report of the Truth Commission.
New York
The names of those who were extradited to be held accountable before a New York court are Armando Gómez and Fabio Simón Younes, who appears in a video that was taken as the main piece by the US authorities to request his extradition from Colombia.
“I got involved in this case when I met Mr. Marlon Marín (nephew of alias Iván Márquez, today protected by the United States justice system and who met with Santrich at his home) in March 2017. I agreed with others, between June 2017 and April 2018, to import into the United States 500 grams or more of cocaine, and I knowingly participated in conversations serving as an intermediary to import cocaine. I knew that importing the cocaine into the United States was illegal,” Younes said last May, pleading guilty.
Gómez also accepted charges and will be sentenced in the coming days.
In the video Santrich is seen sitting at the table talking about an alleged negotiation for the shipment of a drug shipment and the quality of the cocaine that they had to deliver. It was in the middle of that meeting that people from the CTI of the Prosecutor’s Office came to capture him in 2017. He was imprisoned for several weeks and was later released by order of the JEP. He later appeared in Venezuela along with Márquez, el Paisa and Romaña, the heads of the FARC dissidents protected by the Nicolás Maduro regime.
Duke’s response
Former President Iván Duque published on his Twitter account a report that the Ideas for Peace Foundation (FIP) prepared in 2018, when he became President. In the trill he assured that in his period of “government we fight them, we do not reward them or equate them to the State”, referring to the dissidents.
Following what was reported by the report, by the year that Duque came to power there were already fronts that separated from the bulk of ex-combatants who took refuge in peace. In fact, these troops spread throughout various regions of the country such as Cauca, Valle del Cauca, Nariño, Caquetá, Antioquia and Arauca.
Among the leaders who commanded these groups are the dissidents Gentil Duarte and Iván Mordisco, the latter being the one who this Friday announced a ceasefire to advance negotiations with the national government.
Report
In the IFJ’s 178-page report, it can be read that “before and during the pre-grouping, and while the mobilization towards rural areas and transitory points took place, there were members of the FARC who separated from the process.”
The affirmation that appears in the document subtracts weight from what was said by the head of state, who in the declarations did not delve into more details of how it was that Duque supposedly built the dissidences.
In addition, the reasons that led Gentil Duarte and other guerrillas not to take advantage of what was agreed in Havana were exposed by themselves as a sign of continuing to fight for their political ideals.
In dialogue with this newspaper, Juan Camilo Restrepo, former Peace Commissioner, said that what the president said is irresponsible. “It does not correspond to reality, and the statements are disrespectful because when Iván Duque became president, we received an imperfect peace process,” he said.
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