By Julia Symmes Cobb
BOGOTA (Reuters) – A Colombian special court created under the terms of a 2016 peace deal on Tuesday sentenced seven former leaders from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels to the maximum of eight years of reparations work for their role in kidnappings for ransom.
The sentences, for the remaining members of the FARC’s secretariat, are the first individual punishments announced by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), which is trying leaders from both the FARC and the military for their part in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The sentences and the actions that are announced today mark a new procedural phase, now that effective restrictions on the rights of those responsible will be accompanied by work to reparate victims, communities and their regions,” JEP president Alejandro Ramelli said told journalists before the reading of the decision.
“For more than five decades, the past governed our present. Today, we break that cycle,” Ramelli added.
Those sentenced were the FARC’s former top leader Rodrigo Londono, known as Timochenko, and secretariat members Pablo Catatumbo, Pastor Alape, Milton de Jesus Toncel, Jaime Alberto Parra, known as ‘the doctor’, Julian Gallo Cubillos, known as ‘Carlos Antonio Lozada’ and Rodrigo Granda.
(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb)
