Photo: SCHNEYDER MENDOZA / AFP / Getty Images
A Colombian humanitarian entity found “multiple” human remains at a border site with Venezuela that had been pointed out by a former commander of the dissolved right-wing paramilitaries, the peace court announced.
Following indications of the Colombian-Italian Salvatore Mancusowho is serving a sentence of almost 16 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking, the state Search Unit for Missing Persons (UBPD), located the bodies in the municipality of Juan Frío, less than a kilometer from Venezuela.
“They went to the territory and, in an outpost, they found that there are remains in that place”Roberto Vidal, president of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), a court that judges the worst crimes of the Colombian conflict, told Blu Radio.
“With this preliminary information, they are going to begin a detailed investigation to try to identify the corpses,” added the head of the JEP, created after the historic 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, like the UBPD.
Vidal did not specify how many bodies would be buried in the surroundings of Juan Frío, but he assured that there are “multiple remains.”
Mancuso laid down his arms in 2006 as part of a peace agreement with former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), but he was unexpectedly handed over to the US authorities before completing the surrender process in Colombia. Since then, he has denounced ill-treatment and torture to prevent him from telling the truth about the relations between important politicians and the paramilitaries.
Imprisoned in the state of Georgia and through a videoconference a few weeks ago he asked for “help” to find more than 200 corpses of his victims buried in Venezuela.
According to Vidal, the former commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) already indicated “some coordinates on the other side of the border” where these remains would be found.
On Monday, the UBPD announced that it “advances with the diplomatic management for the development of the cross-border search.” The entity estimates that some 100,000 people were victims of forced disappearance in the midst of the armed conflict that has bled Colombia dry for six decades. A higher figure than the combined dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil and Chile in the 20th century.
In their bloody and fire fight against the insurgency, the AUC sowed terror with massacres and persecuted politicians, peasants, and community leaders who, according to them, had ties to left-wing organizations.