260. Meanwhile, as indicated, the State disputed this information and indicated that: (a) only regular troops took part in Operation Genesis; (b) it is not the State’s policy to operate with the illegal self-defense groups; (c) there is no systematic pattern or practice of collusion with the self-defense groups; (d) the State was not responsible for the displacement, nor was its Operation Genesis, rather it was the FARC; (e) it did not accept the expression “joint operations” to refer to supposed actions executed by members of the Army and members of the illegal armed groups, and (f) it is contradictory to affirm that the State failed to adopt measures to protect the community when, at the same time, it is acknowledged that the Armed Forces were in the region carrying out operations. 261. The State added that the reports of March 1997, following the first stages of Operation Genesis do not refer to joint missions with paramilitary groups, neither do some of the voluntary confessions of paramilitaries.521 The State also indicated that several of the paramilitaries who testified in this regard, also presented previous or subsequent versions indicating the opposite, and much of the evidence presented by the Commission and the representatives to support the hypothesis of the joint operations is based on this other version. Consequently, it concluded that the validity of these statements taken as a whole is an immense problem for the State, and also for the courts (supra para. 70). 262. In addition, the representatives and the Commission indicated that, in addition to carrying out joint operations, the State had collaborated in other stages of Operation Cacarica: namely, by bombing the sector of Loma de Cacarica (supra para. 103). 263. As indicated by the deponent for information purposes, Miguel Samper (supra para. 75), according to Colombian law and the case law of the Supreme Court of Justice (supra para. 74), the voluntary confessions, including those that may be considered contradictory or inconsistent and/or that were made by the same candidate, were verified and confirmed by the investigative organs in the context of the Justice and Peace procedure; in this case, the Justice and Peace Unit of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Therefore, the version of the facts that the said organ was finally able to confirm, after comparing the versions, is the one that appears in the position of the Prosecutor General, both before the Colombian jurisdictional organs (supra para. 76), and in the preparation of its documents on the “Elmer Cárdenas Bloc” or on “Operation Cacarica”522 (for example in the “dossier” in this regard). In addition, as recorded in the evidence forwarded to this Court, in the instant case, the Prosecutor General’s Office undertook and continues to undertake the tasks of assessment, investigation and verification of what was affirmed in the voluntary confessions by the demobilized paramilitaries who became candidates for the benefits of the Justice and Peace Law.523 In the case of the contradictory versions, the Court has already indicated in the chapter on evidence that it must take into account the agreement with other probative elements and the context to determine which version is most congruent with the rest of the evidence presented (supra paras. 78 and 79). in Statements of the candidates of the Elmer Cárdenas Bloc concerning Operation Genesis – Cacarica, Medellín, on April 29, 2010, and before the Prosecutor General’s Office, National Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Unit, on December 5, 2011 (evidence file, folios 17896 and 17702); and Testimony of Luis Alirio Córdoba López, cited in the indictment in the proceeding against Rito Alejo del Rio of December 26, 2008 (evidence file, folio 17541). 521 Cf. The Court notes, in particular, that the following voluntary confessions support this hypothesis: Statements of the candidates of the extinct AC Elmer Cárdenas Bloc concerning the so-called “Operation Cacarica (Genesis), of October 24, 2007 (minutes 11:40 and 12:07) (evidence file, folios 19229 and 19230); William Soto Salcedo and Franklin Hernandez Seguro, Statements of the candidates of the extinct AC Elmer Cárdenas Bloc concerning the socalled “Operation Cacarica (Genesis), of August 6, 2008 (minute 14:47) (evidence file, folio 19243). 522 Cf. Prosecutor General’s Office, Document, Powerpoint presentation, and Organizational structure “Operation Cacarica” (evidence file, folios 19257, 19263 and 45234) and Prosecutor General’s Office, Dossier on the Elmer Cárdenas Bloc, structures described by Fredy Rendón (evidence file, folio 45295). 523 Cf. Prosecutor General’s Office, document: “Operation Cacarica” (evidence file, folio 19254). Also, the 14th Prosecutor, National Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Unit in the indictment of Rito Alejo del Río on December 26, 2008, in proceeding 2332, assessed the confessions made by the paramilitaries in light of other probative elements and logical reasoning (evidence file, folios 8861 and ff.). 92

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