JOINT OPINION OF JUDGES SERGIO GARCIA RAMIREZ,
HERNAN SALGADO PESANTES AND ALIRIO ABREU BURELLI
1.
The State violated the right to life, protected under Article 4 of the American
Convention on Human Rights, to the detriment of Julio Milciades Cerón Gómez,
William Hamilton Cerón Rojas, Edebraes Norberto Cerón Rojas, Artemio Pantoja
Ordóñez and Hernán Javier Cuarán Muchavisoy.
2.
It has been duly proven that the violation was caused by the conduct of
agents of the State.
3.
The facts in this case cry out for a judgment of conviction. Those of us who
signed this opinion all share the view that conviction was the proper judgment.
4.
The American Convention states that the function of international protection
of human rights is one of “reinforcing or complementing the protection provided by
the domestic law of the American States.” States must, first of all, rule on the
unlawfulness of the acts; the international court is called upon to rule on the
unlawfulness of the facts only when a State fails to do so.
5.
In the case the Court examined, Colombia’s administrative law courts had, in
two separate instances, ruled that the conduct was unlawful and that the State was
liable, and thus delivered judgments of conviction.
6.
The facts in this case and the conduct of the agents of the State are
described, in compelling terms, in the February 23, 1995 ruling of the Nariño
Administrative Law Court. Excerpts from the judgment appear below:
a)
“The National Police have grossly misrepresented the circumstances of time,
mode and place that put them (the victims) at the scene of the events, so
much so that they (the victims) are presented as anti-social and were treated
as such following their unjust execution; the fiction concocted with regard to
their deaths is completely at odds with the truth.”
b)
“It was there, in the house to which the (Mocoa) Provincial Prosecutor refers
that these unfortunate citizens were killed. They were then portrayed as
criminals. The burning of their clothes would eventually become incriminating
evidence of the way in which the respondent (Nation-National Police) has
twisted the facts in this case, as the bodies then turned up dressed in uniforms
of the National Police.”
c)
The “regrettable acts perpetrated at the Las Palmeras School (were) not the
anti-subversive clash that the Police described. The analysis of the bullet holes
in the schoolhouse showed that all were made by bullets fired into the
schoolhouse from the outside. Concerning the visibility factor and the direct
line of view at the scene of the incident, the record shows that vegetation in
the area of this barbarous act is sparse.”
d)
“The report of the Commandant of the Fourth Company of the Special Armored
Force, dated January 23, 1991 (…) is a lie, because there was never any armed
clash with subversives at Villa Nueva; (the victims) were not dressed in
National Police uniforms before being executed by National Police units; Mr.
Julio Milciades Cerón Gómez, who died together with his (sons) Guido William
and Edebraes Dimas, were not ‘outlaws’ and were carrying none of the
weapons of war or provisions described in that report.”