The Colombian government has responded to the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s refusal to suspend the arrest warrants for members of the Clan del Golfo, stressing that President Gustavo Petro has the authority to request this type of legal action.
«We want to advance in a dialogue with the Public Prosecutor’s Office to explain the arguments of the decrees based on the law that was modified, but it must be said that the law changed and (it) empowers the president to request these types of suspensions,» explained the Minister of Interior, Alfonso Prada.
According to Prada, this power given to the president can «advance in the process of peace dialogues with the organizations that are recognized as having political status and with conversations with high impact structures, armed and criminal, that move in the illegal economy with a view to advancing in the process of submission».
Despite pointing out that the Executive «respects the decisions of the judicial branch», the minister has insisted that the cabinet seeks to clarify before the Public Prosecutor’s Office the context in which such requests to lift arrest warrants were made.
The Colombian Attorney General’s Office had hours earlier dismissed the request made by the government of Gustavo Petro to suspend the arrest warrants for several former paramilitary leaders of the Clan del Golfo or the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada.
«From the legal-criminal point of view, which is the one that binds the Attorney General’s Office, the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada (ACSN, also known as Los Pachenca) and the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (Clan del Golfo) do not have a political status,» reads the brief, signed by Deputy Attorney General Martha Mancera, according to RCN Radio.
Petro’s total peace was sanctioned in the so-called Law 418, which establishes its legal framework and with which a project that, on the one hand, seeks to negotiate with those organizations of a political nature, such as the ELN and once the FARC, but at the same time submit others, such as the paramilitary and drug trafficking groups, to the Colombian justice system, remains a state policy.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
