Paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias ‘Jorge 40’, in his last chance to be eligible for justice under the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), insisted Thursday that he was not only a third party collaborator of the self-defense groups, but also of the FARC and ELN guerrillas.
«From my most essential intimacy I want to declare that I feel deeply and sincerely sorry for all the pain and damage caused (…) as a result of my actions as a third party and as a combatant,» he apologized to the victims before answering the questions of the JEP.
A former paramilitary chief of the Northern Bloc of the now defunct United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), ‘Jorge 40’ has said he is willing to accept that he was a paramilitary and that he financed those groups, but not under the JEP’s accusation that as a combatant he served as a liaison with law enforcement.
This is the last chance for ‘Jorge 40’ to avail himself of this type of special justice, which emerged after the agreements with the FARC in 2016, which does not include paramilitary groups in its jurisdiction. His plan is to prove that he participated in Colombia’s internal conflict as a third party civilian collaborator.
Before the JEP’s questions in this hearing, which will have a second and final session this Friday 27, ‘Jorge 40’ has asked to reveal the reasons why he was not only a third party collaborator of the AUC, but also of the now-defunct FARC guerrillas and the National Liberation Army (ELN).
«I was first a third party collaborator of the ELN and the FARC, that was Rodrigo Tovar from 1993 to 1996,» said ‘Jorge 40’, who blamed «abandonment and oppression» for the reasons why «good, peaceful, hard-working citizens» ended up taking up arms against the Colombian state.
Jorge 40′ is giving his statement from La Picaleña prison, in the city of Ibagué (Tolima), where he has been since his return from the United States in 2020 after serving a 12-year sentence for drug trafficking. He was recently sentenced to 40 years for a double murder in 1999.
Like other illustrious paramilitaries such as Salvatore Mancuso, ‘Jorge 40’ also joined former President Alvaro Uribe’s demobilization policy, acknowledging his participation in more than 1,400 crimes, including 300 massacres, for which he will now have to answer if he does not manage to grab hold of the JEP.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
