Colombia's transitional justice system, established to address crimes committed during the country's decades-long civil conflict, has issued an indictment against a group of former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once the nation's largest rebel group.
On Tuesday, 10 former rebels were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between 1996 and 2016. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the transitional court, said the accused carried out torture, killings and forced displacement targeting five Indigenous groups in southeastern Colombia.
"Today we bring justice to the most forgotten peoples of a discriminatory Colombia," JEP judge Catalina Diaz declared. She explained that FARC commanders ordered subordinates to plant landmines on Indigenous territory and destroy the ecosystems the communities depend on to survive. "These people had their basic right to exist violated," Diaz added.
The indictment is the latest example of Colombia's efforts to confront the abuses and violence of a civil conflict that lasted more than half a century and produced grave human rights violations.
Since the 1960s, leftist rebels, government security forces, criminal networks and pro-government right-wing paramilitary groups have fought for control of territory and to shape the country's power structures. Indigenous communities and activists continue to face violent attacks in Colombia to this day. The persistent fighting has also driven up the death toll.
A 2022 report by Colombia's Truth Commission found that 450,664 people were killed between 1985 and 2018 as a result of the conflict, and a further 121,768 were forcibly disappeared.
Activists and Indigenous community leaders welcomed Tuesday's JEP decision as recognition that their communities had been targeted. "For the first time, the Colombian state acknowledges that [armed groups] didn't just kill individuals," said Yhon Jairo Figueroa, a leader of the Koreguaje people. "They also tried to kill knowledge, language and territory."
Three of the accused are also former members of FARC's final secretariat, the group that reached a 2016 peace deal with the government that included disarmament. Critics of the accord and its implementation argue that many individuals responsible for abuses escaped accountability. Some FARC fighters who rejected the deal later formed dissident groups that continued to fight.
The 2016 agreement ultimately gave former rebels 10 seats in Colombia's Congress to address FARC's political concerns. One of the suspects indicted on Tuesday is Julian Gallo, who served eight years as a senator under that arrangement.
The JEP can only impose non-prison sanctions. Last year, it convicted seven former FARC members accused of kidnapping and handed them eight years of reparative work, including landmine clearance and helping search for the disappeared. The JEP has also sentenced former military personnel to reparations for their role in the killing and disappearance of civilians who were later recorded as rebels in government files — a scandal known as "false positives."
Critics warn, however, that the JEP's existence is under threat under newly inaugurated far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella. Allies of de la Espriella have proposed cutting nearly 17 percent of the JEP's budget for fiscal year 2027. Such budget cuts are due to be considered by Colombia's Congress this month.
Before taking office in August, de la Espriella was a defense lawyer who in some cases represented right-wing paramilitary groups. He has criticized the JEP, accusing it of handing down overly lenient sentences.
