The former paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso, who was commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), signed this Friday a commitment with the Government to seek information about the lands that were his and handed over to compensate the victims of the conflict, but today they are in the hands of others or lost.
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“Mr. Salvatore Mancuso, peace manager, publicly commits (…) to seek and deliver information about the lands that he and other paramilitaries who have also committed to hand over (…) and that are not in the victim reparation fund”, expressed the director of the Victims Unit, Lilia Solano, when reading the document she signed with Mancuso.
During the National Meeting for Collective Reparation in Bogotá, the former AUC commander indicated that with this pact he hopes “help search, find, those goods” that he handed over almost two decades ago to the Government and that “Today they should be in the hands of the victims, the farmers, but unfortunately a large part of these assets we do not know where they are.”
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On September 23, Mancuso, Solano and the director of the National Land Agency (ANT), Felipe Harman, denounced that almost 400 goods delivered for reparation to the victims by the former commander of the extinct AUC or they are in the executive’s inventory and their whereabouts are unknown.
Mancuso has been handing over to the Colombian State through the Justice and Peace processes since 2007 more than 500 assets, especially farms, properties and businesses that were used by the AUC. of which the Victims Unit only has inventories of 123.
In that sense, the former paramilitary chief assured the victims that he has spoken with businessmen and landowners, with which he has achieved “to obtain several thousand hectares that are currently being processed so that the State can acquire them and you can have the opportunity to have them.”
Sorry for a murder
During the event, Mancuso apologized for the murder of the indigenous leader Kimy Pernía Domicó, perpetrated in 2001 in the Caribbean region, a crime that he had already recognized four years ago.
Pernía Domicó disappeared on June 2, 2001 in the urban area of Tierralta, a town in Córdoba (north) where the Embera community of Alto Sinú lives, after being forced to get on a motorcycle.
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The leader’s disappearance was attributed to the group Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá (ACCU), parent company of the AUC, an organization that dissolved in mid-2006. after the demobilization of more than 31,000 paramilitaries.
“I gave the order to the material authors (…) of that regrettable action in which the indigenous leader of this region was murdered,” Mancuso expressed this Friday.
He added: “I want to sincerely apologize to you, to all the indigenous communities, especially the Embera Katío of this region of the department of Córdoba, because I should never have made that decision (to order the crime).”
During the event, a representative of the Embera Katío asked Mancuso “compensate”, Because it was because of crimes like Pernía’s that, he said, those indigenous people were deterritorialized and ended up distributed throughout the country.
“If there is truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition, we will truly welcome this process that is being carried out,” the spokesperson added.
EFE
