Colombia: FARC Invites Uribe to Meet Him at Commission of Truth

The head of the new FARC political party Rodrigo Londoño, known better by his nom de guerre “Timochenko,” proposed that former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe meet at the Commission of Truth.

RELATED:

'Violence Must Be Out Of Politics': Colombia, ELN Hold Talks

“Let's meet at the Commission of Truth with the clear purpose of casting light on our responsibilities from the past. Say a date and we'll go together,” wrote Londoño in an open letter titled “The future generations need a better tomorrow.”

The Commission of Truth is a “temporal organ, of extra-legal nature, created historically in processes of transition from dictatorships to democracy and from armed conflicts to peace, to cast light on violence patterns,” but it's not “a mechanism to administer justice, but rather to contribute to truth and recognizes the rights of the victims.”

In the letter, Timochenko said that after the 2016 peace agreement signed by the now demobilized FARC and the government, Alvaro Uribe should know that “the developments of the process will end up taking him to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP)”

The JEP integrates organisms in charge of supervising the investigations for truth, justice, amnesty, pardon, repair and none victimization of the armed conflict victims, besides a Peace Tribunal in charge of investigating, clarifying and sanctioning human rights violations.

According to Timochenko, the JEP's objectives and mechanisms explain Uribe's wish to “destroy the special justice” and the proposal of his presidential candidate protegee Ivan Duque, from the right-wing Democratic Center party, to create a single court for Colombia in order to “destroy the ordinary jurisdiction lawsuits in which Uribe's name “due to its numerous actions, is wobbly and airing out.”

The FARC leader goes on recognizing that himself, along with Uribe and “many others” are “at the doors of answering to justice for their behavior related with the internal conflict,” for which it considers “good” setting “an example about what is searching and clarifying truth” for the country.

During its eight-year administration, ex-president Alvaro Uribe took a harsh stance on the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, escalating the armed conflict that took hundreds of innocent lives.

The former president has been one of the most fierce opponents of the peace deal, which may be in danger if his candidate Duque wins the upcoming presidential elections on May 27.