LIVE: Follow the hearing of the paramilitary “Jorge 40” before the JEP

The appearing party began to talk about his childhood and how it developed in Valledupar and that part of the Caribbean region; However, at one point in his testimony, he said that at the Loperena National School “a minority of teachers came to indoctrinate a youth that had a very provincial mentality but was avid and open to new things.” He also said that this indoctrination was Marxist-communist “that came from the outside from that seed of hatred.”

In the middle of that story, Judge Castro Ospina interrupted him and asked him to be “more reflective in his language” and that, in that order, his oratory could re-victimize a part of the teachers’ union that could have been affected by paramilitary violence.

The hearing resumes and Tovar Pupo asks the JEP magistracy “what interpretation do they have of the word paramilitary.” In this regard, Sandra Castro explained to him that this term describes the activity he carried out within an illegal armed group. By the way, she confirmed that those attending the hearing want to hear his story and that at this point in said procedure it is not important to delve into the request of the former commander of the Northern Bloc.

Immediately afterwards, Tovar Pupo clarified that he “was nothing else” a collaborator of the AUC between mid-1996 and the end of 1997, the year in which he belonged to that parastatal structure as a combatant.

The hearing will resume at 2:00 pm.

Jorge 40 stated that he was willing to participate in President Gustavo Petro’s Total Peace project. “From wanting to bring together all the parts of the national fragmentation in its varied diversity and working tirelessly from the regions to heal the accumulated wounds,” he said.

“From my most essential privacy I want to declare that I feel deeply and sincerely sorry for all the pain and damage caused to each one of you, in any place, village, town and city, in a part of the Colombian Caribbean, as a result of my actions. as a third party and as a combatant,” said Tovar Pupo.

“When Rodrigo Tovar Pupo thought about the possibility of having a weapon in my hands to defend my rights and freedoms, never in my thoughts or in my heart was there the intention of causing pain or harm to any Colombian… before I became into a perpetrator”, affirmed the former paramilitary chief to whom more than 600 crimes have been attributed.

Judge Sandra Jeannette Castro Ospina demanded that alias Jorge 40 refer to the victims as victims and not use the word “survivor” that he used in his speech. They will grant him space to start his appearance from his personal life for a period of one hour.

Tovar Pupo is willing to accept having been a paramilitary and a financier and collaborator of those groups. But not about the accusation of “subject incorporated into the public force” that the JEP attributes to him, when indicating that he was a hinge between the paramilitaries and the public force.

“There was neither time nor decent means to prepare a hearing like this,” said Tovar Pupo’s lawyer, who had requested a month’s postponement, but only had two days. The magistrate assured that they had known about the hearing for three months.

“Abandonment and oppression chained us citizens, who at that time were good, peaceful, hard-working citizens,” Tovar said as part of his justification for his personal life.

Tovar Pupo asked to explain his life story and what led him to be a third collaborator of the self-defense groups, the Farc and the ELN. “That was first, a collaborator of the ELN and the Farc, from 1993 to 1996,” he said.

“If they won’t let me explain what the sacoleva orangutan was, neither the survivors nor the Colombians here will ever understand what happened in certain regions of the country where civilians, totally abandoned by the State, As a matter of law, our rights and freedoms were totally violated, due to pressure unknown to us and foreign,” said ex-paramilitary member Jorge 40.

“If here I am not going to be given the opportunity to explain, I will not start from where the GRAI doctor says, whose assessments are respectable but too contradictory. If it is not understood that the conflict in that area… Colombia must understand what the dynamics were in those particular regions of the Colombian conflict, because it seems that we are judging the past but with an eye on the present,” Tovar Pupo said.

Tovar Pupo contradicted the report of the JEP Investigation and Analysis Group on the paramilitary context in Cesar. He said that he was only a collaborator and pointed out that the court imposes a figure on him that he never was.

“Before any topic, I want to request permission to address – taking advantage of this unique opportunity – those you call victims, who I call survivors. First of all, I would like to address them and before starting to answer their questions, I want us to touch on the case of the conditions that the JEP places on me, ”asked Rodrigo Tovar Pupo to start his appearance.

“As well as the paramilitary groups committed crimes directly for them for the incursion and expansion, they also possibly committed them in collusion (with the public forces),” said the Analysis Group on the hypothesis of the case of paramilitarism in Cesar .

“Despite the strong presence of the AUC in the area (Cesar), in the data that we have been able to establish, the analysis of the military actions of the public forces in the period from 1994 to 2007 was directed mainly against the guerrilla groups and not the paramilitary groups. Against the guerrilla groups 492 actions and paramilitaries 53 actions in that period”, explained the analysis group on the paramilitary context.

Tovar Pupo asked the magistrates and interveners to call him by his name and not by the alias he adopted when he was a paramilitary commander, Jorge 40.

Tovar Pupo “is fulfilling this call of the special justice for peace and is ready to face the country,” said lawyer Andrés Felipe Caballero. Alias ​​Jorge 40 must submit evidence of the remarks that he will make during the hearing within 20 days.

The single hearing to determine the truth will be the opportunity for the paramilitary chief of the Northern Bloc of the AUC to appear before the special court

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