Armed Conflicts, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: Ex-Hostage Says FARC Killed 11 Captives

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTÁ, Feb 7 2009 (IPS) - “Why did they kill them? Out of physical cowardice. It’s what we call murder. Sheer physical cowardice. It’s what we call a war crime,” said former lawmaker Sigifredo López, just freed by the FARC, about the massacre of his 11 colleagues on Jun. 18, 2007, when they were hostages of the Colombian guerrillas.

“It takes more courage not to murder a defenceless citizen,” he added.

Kidnapped together with the 11 other regional lawmakers in April 2002, López remained in the hands of the rebels until Thursday, when he was unilaterally freed by the insurgents.

“Some idiots from the 29th (Front) turned up without telling us beforehand,” one of the three guerrillas he used to talk with during his captivity told López.

“There are some things I can’t mention, because if I give certain details, they will know who it was,” and that person will be shot, López said at a press conference in Cali, the capital of the western province of Valle del Cauca.

According to his version, the people responsible for the deaths of the 11 regional legislators were six members of the 29th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which operates in the jungle of southwestern Colombia.

Upon the unexpected arrival of this group of guerrillas at the camp where the hostages were held by rebels belonging to the 60th Front, the guards carried out their standing orders from the high command of the FARC, which were to execute the hostages in the case of any attack or rescue attempt by the army.

At 11.30 on that sunny morning (16.30 GMT), two shots were fired, “from outside, coming toward” the camp, López said.

He assumed the guerrillas were shooting ducks, but another two shots followed almost immediately, so he threw himself flat on the ground.

Three minutes later, there were bursts of machinegun fire and he heard yells, “like fighters in combat”.

“Don’t let them go, don’t let them go!” López heard the guerrilla commander of the unit in charge of the hostages shout, through the machinegun fire.

“Someone said ‘the vultures are here,’ and the commander said ‘kill them and let’s go,'” the rebel who talked to López told him.

López was chained to a tree, 50 metres away from the rest of the hostages, behind a screen made of canes, as “punishment” for being “rude” and “insubordinate”, so he did not hear the order from the rebel commander, nor did he see his colleagues being killed.

His personal guard was at a nearby creek, washing the lunch dishes. When the other guerrillas left, the guard remembered López and came back for him 10 minutes later.

When López and his guard passed by the place where the other hostages had been, there was no one there.

“Have they taken them away already?” he asked. “Yes, they’ve taken them away,” his guard replied. Later on, he realised that his question had been ambiguous, and the answer could imply that his colleagues had been taken away alive and well.

López heard what had happened to them 10 days later, at four in the morning, when the widow of one of the dead politicians said on the radio that, according to the FARC’s Joint Western Command, the 11 lawmakers had died in the crossfire when an unidentified military group attacked the camp where they were located.

Reeling from the news, he asked a rebel to find out from the unit commander whether it was true. The guerrilla came back the same morning and told him bluntly: “They send word that everything you have heard is true.”

The death of those 11 people was not a consequence of an attempted military rescue by the government, López said.

His conclusion is consistent with the government’s version.

If it had been a military rescue, he would have heard helicopters, he reasoned. And the guerrillas would not have been there, “because as soon as they see a soldier they run for it.” “There was no fighting there, and there were no helicopters,” he repeated.

“They were murdered by the FARC,” he accused, a movement of armed peasants “that is insurgent and terrorist at the same time,” and whose fighters join its ranks “to be able to eat” because the state “hasn’t given them any other options”.

“Why did they kill them? Because of something called paranoia,” in López’s view, which was again consistent with the government’s interpretation.

Thus the sole survivor, López, contradicted an account of the events published by this IPS correspondent in August 2007, which was based on a civilian source connected to the FARC’s supply network.

“The word I used most in the four to six months after my colleagues were killed was not ‘God,’ but ‘s.o.b.’s and murderers,'” he said.

“I was eaten up by hatred. I saw them and I couldn’t stand them. I asked them not to talk to me beyond what was absolutely necessary, not to say hello to me,” he said, describing his relationship with the guerrillas immediately after the massacre. “I wept all day, those first days,” he said, and he lost his appetite.

Eventually he decided he could not continue mired in depression and hatred. He had stopped writing, but he began an essay on the conflict in Colombia, which included the ideas of his murdered companions.

The FARC did not let him bring this essay with him on his release.

López was the sixth hostage to be unilaterally freed as a goodwill gesture this week by the FARC, who are still holding 22 military and police officers, some of whom have been in captivity for over 10 years, with the goal of exchanging them for an undetermined number of guerrillas imprisoned by the government.

These releases were negotiated by the civilian organisation Colombians for Peace, led by opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba.

“The terrible killing of my colleagues,” said López, “leaves a mark on the soul that Colombians will never be able to forget,” and he called for further mass demonstrations to protest against kidnappings.

“I will only forgive the FARC the day that ‘Grillo,’ the commander of the 60th Front who gave the order to murder my companions, gives a press conference (for their families) and says: ‘Forgive me, it was a mistake made during the war,’ looking their children in the eye,” he said.

And he told the children of the deceased lawmakers who were present at the press conference that their fathers “were honourable men who died with the very highest human dignity.”

“In the jungle, all that one has is one’s dignity. Even life ceases to matter. The great battle we all waged was simply to be treated with respect, to be spoken to properly, instead of being called ‘sons of bitches,'” he said.

“But among the guerrillas, as everywhere else, there are uncouth louts, and others who treat you with respect,” he qualified.

López declared his support for a negotiated solution to the war, saying that in spite of everything, “We can’t carry on sending messages of hate.”

He proposed an immediate exchange of prisoners, brokered by Senator Córdoba and Catholic bishop Luis Augusto Castro, head of the Colombian Episcopal Conference.

To that end, the guerrillas should give up their demand for a demilitarised zone for negotiations, and the government should study the legal situation of imprisoned guerrillas who want to return to the ranks of the FARC, he said. Anything less is a “yes, but no,” he said about Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s repeated refusal to free guerrillas who would not give up the armed struggle.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos announced a new all-out offensive against the FARC.