MADRID 28 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The group of 18 former Colombian paramilitaries who were appointed as peace managers by the country’s president, Gustavo Petro, reported this Thursday that they have accepted the appointment, thus joining the president’s initiative to implement ‘total peace’ with the armed groups in the country.
“With this act, we join the peace agenda that you lead, Mr. President, and that interprets, while the world is heading towards a nuclear conflict, the majority will of the Colombian people to transition to a prosperous and peaceful Colombia,” he said. expressed by the former paramilitaries in a letter addressed to Petro.
The Colombian president announced a couple of weeks ago the appointment of nearly twenty former paramilitary leaders as peace managers for a period of six months. The Government indicated that this agency will focus on reviewing the agreement of the former paramilitaries during the Álvaro Uribe Government.
Prominent figures include former leaders of the now dissolved United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) such as Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias ‘Jorge 40’; Hernán Giraldo, alias ‘El Taladro’; Carlos Mario Jiménez, known as ‘Macaco’; or Hevert Veloza, known by his alias ‘HH’, among others.
Before all of them, the Government had already appointed the head of the AUC, Salvatore Mancuso, as peace manager in July 2023, who arrived in Colombia in February of this year after two years in a detention center while his extradition was being resolved. after serving a sentence for drug trafficking crimes in the United States.
Mancuso, known as ‘Triple Zero’ during his armed past, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the El Aro massacre – which occurred in October 1997, when 15 people were murdered and an undetermined number had to leave their homes – , although he did not comply with it because he joined the Justice and Peace Law mechanism, promoted by former President Uribe to demobilize paramilitaries.