Terror hits Colombia's justice system
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Judge Gloria Gaona, murdered on Tuesday in Arauca, Colombia.
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A November 5 post to this blog, “Credit where it’s due,” praised the Colombian government for an unusually rapid response to an alleged military human rights abuse.
Evidence pointed to Colombian Army personnel’s involvement in the murder of three children in the northeastern department (province) of Arauca. At the time, Colombian authorities responded by suspending several officers, arresting a lieutenant, and turning the case immediately to the civilian justice system. According to that post:
The Colombian defense establishment’s reaction to the Arauca murders has – so far, at least – been proactive and transparent: a by-the-book model of “what to do after an abuse takes place.”
Sadly, nearly five months later, this is no longer a good-news story.
The judge assigned to the case, Gloria Gaona, was murdered Tuesday morning, on a sidewalk in broad daylight, while on the way to her courtroom in Saravena, Arauca. The assassin, who remains at large, shot the 36-year-old judge in the head at least five times.
The three children’s murder was one of several risky cases before Judge Gaona, who also presided over trials of FARC and ELN members in guerrilla-heavy Arauca. But her murder came weeks after several troubles with military defense lawyers that call into question whether, even in this egregious, high-profile abuse case, the armed forces were cooperating with, or in fact actively blocking, the civilian investigation and prosecution.
According to the La Silla Vacía (The Empty Chair) website, Judge Gaona
rejected the Military Defense (Defensoría Militar) lawyers’ request that pretrial detention be allowed to expire, and accused them of being unfit and using delaying tactics, after which two lawyers resigned from [defendant Lieutenant Raúl] Muñoz’s defense. She also publicly scolded Muñoz’s defense for their delaying “tricks.” That is why, some days ago, she announced that she would ask the Supreme Judiciary Council of Colombia’s Supreme Court to investigate Muñoz’s lawyers, who are members of the Integral Military Public Defender’s Office, or DEMIL.
Judge Gaona’s murder is not good news for the defense of Lieutenant Raúl Muñoz, the officer who stands accused of murdering the three children five months ago. His case will likely be moved to Bogotá, and the cloud of suspicion hanging over him is now far darker. The Colombian government has strongly condemned the murder, which has led news coverage in the country over the past two days, and offered a reward of 500 million pesos (about US$268,000) for information leading to the crime’s resolution.
The murder, however, also sends a chilling message to judges, prosecutors, investigators and witnesses in cases of alleged military human rights abuse. Most of these individuals already work in conditions of frequent threats and insufficient security. The Supreme Judiciary Council estimates that 750 judges have been threatened since 2007.
The result may be increased impunity for the military’s past human rights abuses, including what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights now counts as up to 3,000 extrajudicial executions of civilians, most committed between 2004 and 2008. The High Commissioner’s report notes a sharp decrease in transfer of such cases from the military to the civilian justice system, and even contends that military judges who collaborated with civilian justice on human rights cases have been transferred and dismissed.
In this climate, in an article posted yesterday detailing other recent cases of intimidation, La Silla Vacía asks, “Is the Military Untouchable?” It is an important question, both for the future of Colombia’s democracy and civil-military relations, and for the future of U.S. assistance to Colombia.