a)
Luis Edmundo Pantoja Ordóñez, a brother of Artemio Pantoja Ordóñez.
He had a very close relationship with the victim due to their kinship and because
they had worked together in construction. On January 23, 1991 a friend informed
him of the death of his brother. When he arrived at the hospital to corroborate this,
the policemen did not allow him to enter through the main door, they asked him “if
he was going to see the guerrilla fighter;” they hit him with the butt of a weapon,
and they implied that they were going to shoot at him. The day of the funeral,
several men who were recognized as members of the police took photographs from
the second floor of the houses. After the burial, members of the police went to his
house and watched it. At that time he did not go out to the street alone out of fear.
When the policemen saw him they asked him to identify himself, threw his
identification card on the ground, and insulted him. He was afraid that they might
do something to him like they did to his brother, so he filed a claim before the
Government Attorney’s Office. The Government Attorney accompanied him to an
appointment with the Police Commander, Pedro Pablo Linares, who referred to his
brother as the “black sheep” of the family because ha was allegedly a guerrilla
fighter. The Government Attorney warned the Commander that whatever happened
to the witness would be the Commander’s responsibility, and since then they did not
bother him any more.
The fact that the police stated that his brother was a guerrilla fighter, even though
he was known to be a hard-working person, has affected his family and, in his case,
has affected his work, and no government institutions hired him any more. Given
the impunity of the facts, the authorities continue to consider his brother and his
family guerrilla fighters. The witness feels anger, indignation, and grief because
those responsible have not yet been punished, even though it is known who they
are. The authorities do not punish these facts and what they do is transfer the
policemen elsewhere, to give the impression that they were punished.
He has never been summoned to render testimony in the investigations regarding
the death of his brother, and since the case was transferred to Bogotá, it is difficult
to find out the status of the proceedings. He hopes that the Court will order the
State to punish all those responsible and to publicly announce, with the best possible
coverage, and especially in Mocoa, where his family lives, that his brother was not a
guerrilla fighter and that he was arbitrarily deprived of his life.
b)
María Adelina López, the widow of Artemio Pantoja Ordóñez.
She is a housewife. On January 23, 1991 her children went to the hospital to find
out who the dead persons were, but the policemen did not allow them to enter, until
a physician who was a friend of Artemio arrived and asked the policemen to let them
in; then they found out that their father had died. The next of kin took a coffin to
the hospital, and the policemen inspected it with the excuse that there might be a
bomb in it. The first night of the vigil for her husband, the police issued a report
signed by Pedro Pablo Linares, stating that her husband was one of the dead
guerrilla fighters. She could not understand how the policemen had killed him
because he had friends there and one of his daughters worked with the police, and
she also thought that they protected them. At that time, her children were afraid to
stay out late on the street, and her son Ramiro was harassed, and they branded him
as the “son of a guerrilla fighter.” When the policemen saw him, they asked him to
identify himself and she was afraid that they might do to him what they had done to
his father. The day she went with Blanca Flor Rojas and Amanda Anacona to claim
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