8
National Police, was shelved in October 2009 because members of the police were at
that time pursuing a risk assessment study and no irregularities were found. In
relation to the alleged threats of May 8, 2010 against Ms. Luz Mery Pinzón, as noted
by the representatives (infra Considering 18), the State reported that no complaint
has yet been filed and that the Attorney General has not been able to commence the
relevant investigations to corroborate if, in effect, such criminal threats were made.
Furthermore, the State specified that the Attorney General’s Office only has one
criminal complaint on file from 2008 for the crime of domestic violence against a
family member.
The State requested the rescission of provisional measures
regarding Sara Paola Pinzón, Luz Mery López, and their family members.
17. The representatives affirmed during the hearing that the risk that Sara Paola
Pinzón López and her family face remains in full effect. They indicated that although
the State declared that it did not know the location of these family members, during
December 2008 and January 2009 some police officials made calls to the residences
and cellular phones of Pinzón family members, a communication tactic that was
never agreed upon and that unnecessarily places the beneficiaries on alert. The
representatives accepted that not all facts have been reported in a timely manner,
but despite this they find that from this situation it does not necessarily follow that
there is a complete absence of risk. They further reported that on April 17, 2009,
Ms. Sara Paola Linzón López received at her home “a visit from persons who
identified themselves as agents of the national police, [declaring] to have come on
behalf of the lawyer collective.” Ms. Pinzón allowed these alleged agents to enter
her apartment and asked them to identify themselves; however, only one of them
spoke up and indicated that he was part of the local police command despite not
wearing the proper attire for his public position. The representatives confirmed that
during the monitoring and coordination meeting held on April 8, 2010 the
representative from the Attorney General’s Office reported that the investigation was
closed after having found that “the actions taken by the police agents were
according to the legal provisions [in place] for these cases.”
18. On the other hand, in their last brief the representatives indicated that on May
8, 2010 three unknown individuals showed up at the residence of Ms. Luz Mery
Pinzón López in the city of Villavicencio, calling themselves lawyers and asking her to
advance them legal fees for eventual compensation claims. These individuals also
claimed to want to represent her and her sisters before national authorities, saying
that the “lawyer collective isn’t the only one who could represent them” and that the
collective only “wants to get rich off the victims.” One of these “alleged lawyers”
handed over a business card “with the name Hernán Páez Zapata” and claimed to be
an official with the Public Ombudsman who had represented other victims of the
Mapiripán massacre in litigation, having found the victims’ information on the
internet. In light of this event, the representatives of the beneficiary launched an
investigation into these “so-called lawyers” and found that there is no case ongoing,
the man who identified himself does not actually work for the Public Ombudsman,
and it is evident that in the Court’s Judgment, the home addresses of the victims are
not present. The representatives also reported that the previous July 13, 2010 a
man “named Armando Céspedes Espinoza,” who identified himself as an attorney,
called the Pinzón residence asking for Ms. Luz Mery with whom she had filed her
complaint. Ms. Luz Mery Pinzón “asked again who she was speaking with” and Mr.
Céspedes responded “that he and his friends work with the CTI (Technical
Investigation Branch of the Prosecutor’s Office).”
After this occurrence, the
representatives requested that the State “verify the accuracy of this information,
initiate disciplinary investigations [...] as these persons held themselves out to be
public officials[,]” and that “in the event that they were not, [the representatives]
regard these events as constituting a clear case of harassment directed towards the