Colombian president supports sentence for crimes against UP

Bogota, Jan 30 (Prensa Latina) Colombian President Gustavo Petro affirmed on Monday that his Government would support the sentence issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the extermination of members of the Patriotic Union (UP) party.

January 30, 2023
CST12:18 (GMT) -0500

Published by: Ileana Ferrer Fonte

On his Twitter profile, Petro recalled that international justice was established when the States are not capable of judging the worst crimes, such as crimes against humanity.

A US court of justice will say today that the State helped assassinate thousands of militants of a political party just because it was a left-wing party. A murderous State,’ Petro stressed.

On Monday morning, the Inter-American Court issued the sentence against the Colombian State for the assassinations of 5,733 people linked to the UP party.

According to a case conducted by Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, 5,195 of those people were UP members, and 538 did not belong to that political party but were killed or are missing in acts of violence directed against that group.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) and the Colombian Communist Party founded the UP party on May 28, 1985, as part of a peace proposal following the Uribe Accords between the Government of Belisario Betancur and the guerrillas.

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