46
reporting on the incursion and foreseeing the violation of the fundamental rights of
the population of Mapiripán.
96.38 The Attorney General’s Office concluded that Brigadier General Jaime
Humberto Uscátegui Ramírez, Commander of the VII Brigade, and Colonel Lino
Hernando Sánchez Prado, Commander of the 2d Mobile Brigade, demonstrated
complete functional and operational inactivity despite knowing about the massacre.
Furthermore, said Office established that in face of the arrival of the AUC, the troops
of the Joaquín París Battalion were mobilized from San José de Guaviare toward
other locations, leaving the population of said places and of Mapiripán unprotected.
Lieutenant Orozco Castro stated that when it became necessary to send military
forces to Mapiripán, they had been deployed elsewhere in places such as Puerto
Concordia, el Retorno and Calamar. On July 15, 1997, the last companies of the
Joaquín París Battalion were ordered to go to Calamar, despite the fact that there
was no confirmation of public order disturbances in that place. Mobilization of the
Army troops was unjustified and it was based on conjecture or mere contingencies.
96.39 Testimony of the survivors shows that on July 15, 1997 the AUC separated 27
individuals identified on a list as alleged auxiliaries, collaborators, or sympathizers of
the FARC, and that these persons were tortured and dismembered by a member of
the AUC known as the “Mochacabezas”. The paramilitary remained in Mapiripán from
July 15 to 21, 1997, during which time they impeded free movement of the inhabitants
of said municipality, and they tortured, dismembered, eviscerated and decapitated
approximately 49 individuals and threw their remains into the Guaviare River.
Furthermore, once the operation was completed, the AUC destroyed a major part of the
physical evidence with the aim of obstructing the gathering of evidence.
96.40 The testimony shows that José Rolan Valencia, a dispatcher at the airport,
was decapitated; Sinaí Blanco Santamaría was beaten and shot to death; Antonio
María Barrera, aka “Catumare”, was tortured for several hours and then
dismembered. Gustavo Caicedo Rodríguez and brothers Hugo Fernando Martínez
Contreras and Diego Armando Martínez Contreras, 15 and 16 years old, respectively,
were killed together with the Afrodescendant known as “Nelson”, in addition to José
Alberto Pinzón López, Luis Eduardo Pinzón López, Jorge Pinzón López, and Enrique
Pinzón López. Aside from these persons, an April 12, 2000 writ by the Deputy Public
Prosecutor’s Office before the High Court of the Court Circuit states that
“unfortunately there seem to be many more missing persons than those on whom we
have information” and Álvaro Tovar Morales, Jaime Pinzón and Raúl Morales were
killed at the place called La Cooperativa. The April 24, 2001 ruling of the Attorney
General’s Office (infra para. 96.134), which dismissed Brigadier General Uscátegui,
stated that between July 15 and 20, 1997, in the municipality of Mapiripán, an
unidentified male individual and another individual by name Pacho, whose surname
is unknown, were killed, and that a male whose surname is Morales but whose name
is unknown, together with a female by name Teresa, surname unknown, were also
killed at la Cooperativa, as well as “[...] an as yet indeterminate number of
individuals.”
96.41 As a consequence of the modus operandi used to terrorize the population,
carry out the massacre and destroy and get rid of the bodies of the victims, it was
not possible for the authorities to fully identify them. For example, the paramilitary
did not allow the Judge of Mapiripán to remove a body that had floated toward the
port of “El Matadero”.
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