Declassified Documents Key to Judgment Against Colombian Paramilitary

[Judi Lynn]

The paramilitary known as “Macaco” (Carlos Mario Jiménez) is arrested upon his arrival in Colombia on July 20, 2019. (Source: Colombia Attorney General’s Office)

Court finds paramilitaries had “symbiotic relationship with Colombian state actors”

Published: Oct 4, 2021
Briefing Book #
778
Edited by Michael Evans

Washington, D.C., October 4, 2021 – Declassified State Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports that “acknowledge the long-standing relationship between [Colombian] state security forces and the paramilitaries” are among the key evidence behind a historic $12-million judgment against a former Colombian paramilitary leader last week in U.S. federal court in Miami.

Federal Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres found that Carlos Mario Jiménez, the former paramilitary leader known as “Macaco,” was responsible for the murder of Colombian community leader Eduardo Estrada in 2001. The case was developed by the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) and the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ) on behalf of victims in Colombia. More than eleven years in the making, the plaintiffs filed the initial complaint on June 15, 2010.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe extradited Jiménez to the U.S. in 2008, where he was convicted and served 11 years of a 33-year sentence for drug trafficking. His extradition and the subsequent U.S. decision to focus solely on narcotrafficking charges, prevented thousands of victims of Macaco’s paramilitary group, the Bloque Central Bolivar (BCB), from seeking justice for assassinations, massacres, and other acts of violence. In 2019 Jiménez was released and repatriated to Colombia where he was immediately arrested on homicide and conspiracy charges.

In ruling for the plaintiffs, Torres cited “an abundance of evidence” that the BCB “operated in a symbiotic relationship with Colombian state actors” in Colombia’s Magdalena Medio. The evidence helped establish that paramilitaries were operating under color of law when they committed murders and other atrocities, a necessary condition to bring a claim under the U.S. Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA).

More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/colombia/2021-10-04/declassified-documents-key-judgment-against-colombian?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=1bd466c6-a351-4c8e-a06b-b2a17b350632







NARCO-TRAFFICKING & ATTACKS ON HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS
Cabrera v. Jiménez Naranjo



One of Colombia’s most violent paramilitary commanders, known as Macaco, confessed to the murders of hundreds of civilians committed by the Bloque Central Bolívar (BCB), a paramilitary group he founded in the late 1980s and led until its demobilization in 2005. Yet he has never been held to account for these crimes. He was extradited to the United States in 2008 on drug charges, and has so far enjoyed impunity for his role in the widespread human rights atrocities committed under his command. For over a decade, CJA has sought to hold him accountable for torture and extrajudicial killing in U.S. court.

On the night of July 16, 2001, Eduardo Estrada and his partner were walking down a street in San Pablo, Colombia, when a paramilitary soldier approached the pair and shot Eduardo execution-style in the head. The shooting occurred near a local police station. A government soldier passed by Eduardo, lying bleeding on the ground. Neither the police nor the soldier provided assistance. It was only after his family arrived at the scene and flagged down a passing car that he finally made it to a hospital. He died that night.

Over a thousand people attended Eduardo’s funeral. He had been a leader of the social justice organization Program for Peace and Development in the Middle Magdalena (PDP) and an active member of his local community. His assassin was a member of the right-wing paramilitary group known as the Bloque Central Bolívar (BCB), which had overtaken Eduardo’s town of San Pablo since 1999. The BCB was founded and commanded by Carlos Mario Jiménez Naranjo, known as Macaco. Members of the BCB later confessed that they had been ordered to kill Eduardo because his activities to benefit his community, including his work as a PDP leader, threatened their control over the region.

Alma Rosa Jaramillo Lafourie was another victim of the BCB. Because of her work as a human rights attorney and a PDP leader, the BCB denounced her as a left-wing rebel sympathizer and repeatedly threatened her at her home. On July 1, 2001, parts of Alma Rosa’s body were recovered from a river. She had been tortured, mutilated, and dismembered.

More:
https://cja.org/what-we-do/litigation/cabrera-v-jimenez-naranjo/