Many Colombians woke up today uneasy with the news that account for the release in Spain of Luis Jhon Castro Ramirez, alias El Zarco ‘, a demobilized National Liberation Army (ELN) and confessed recruiter of’ false positives’. The reason? In this country they claim that he did not receive the request for extradition from the Government of President Iván Duque.
Although the authorities of the Iberian country, say these versions, made it available to Colombia, Bogotá did not claim it, so the criminal is enjoying such an omission.
The Minister of Justice, Wilson Ruiz, in dialogue with La W Ràdio, he assured that both the Ministry and the Chancellery advanced all the procedures to get the criminal confession extradited to Colombia, and not released, as happened.
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The minister assured that Interpol argued that the air transfer of Castro Ramírez was not carried out due to the restrictions arising from the coronavirus.
“In the case of Luis John Castro Ramírez, known by the nickname ‘El Zarco’, I must point out that the Ministry of Justice and Law and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we did all the necessary procedures and we put the greatest obstinacy to ensure that this member of the ELN, is brought to answer for his crime before the Colombian justice “, said the official in the mentioned transmitter.
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The discussion is open. The reality is that ‘El Zarco’ is not in Colombia today nor Salvatore Mancuso, one of the leaders of the death squads that operated nationally under the acronym of United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC.
In this case, it was reported that it was the sum of a surprising chain of errors in the procedures performed by Colombia: From the corresponding times required by the United States authorities, loss of documents and until the shipment of papers in Spanish without having translated them into English.
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Public reason, A prestigious center of thought, in an analysis of this case in which it summarizes that Colombia presented / displayed four requests before the American authorities to extradite Mancuso. “But they all made mistakes,” he concludes and thus summarizes the assertion.
1. The first two, sent on April 15 and May 13, 2020, were based on arrest warrants issued by the Justice and Peace Chamber of the Superior Court of Barranquilla for crimes such as homicide, disappearance and displacement.
The US judiciary did not respond to these requests, because the authorship attributed to Mancuso is that of having commanded the organized group that committed them, and this figure of responsibility does not exist in the legal system of the United States.
2. The third and fleeting extradition request had to be withdrawn, as the crimes in question had already been known to Justice and Peace, there was already a conviction and the sentence had been served. Among these were some homicides and kidnappings.
3. The fourth was not an extradition request, but a request for pre-trial detention for extradition purposes, which the Chancellery submitted on August 20 in accordance with the orders of the Justice and Peace Chamber of the ‘Judicial District Court of Bogota.
4. Some media noted that the request was not filed in English, a requirement that is enshrined in the extradition treaty between the United States and Colombia. To this, the Chancellery replied that it hoped to advance the process of pre-trial detention while translating the complete file to request an extradition request.
5. The above indicates that the Colombian government has not submitted any application that meets the requirements for the extradition of Mancuso to Colombia.
That being the case, the confusion among many citizens is natural: Why is Colombia failing in the cover of criminals of such caliber?
POLITICS