By Sovereign Hager

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BOGOTA, Colombia-Jaime Uscategui, a retired general, was sentenced to forty years in prison on Wednesday for his involvement in a massacre by right wing paramilitaries. A court ruled that Uscategui, who was a commander of the eighth brigade in 1997, was complicit in the murder of forty-nine civilians by paramilitaries.

In July of 1997, over 100 armed members of a right wing paramilitary groups entered the village of Mapiripzán, despite being officially banned from activity. The paramilitaries commenced a five-day killing spree, where civilians were tortured and murdered.

The military failed to stop the massacre or stop the paramilitaries at one of the many checkpoints on their way into the village. A pair of chartered planes full of right wing gunmen landed and were dispatched to oversee the mass killings form Uscategui’s area.

During the five-day massacre, the town’s judge, Ivan Cortes, repeatedly called Uscategui for help, with no response. Bodies were “hacked up and many were thrown into a river.” Hundreds of suspected leftist rebel sympathizers were killed during the 1990s.

The court overruled an earlier acquittal, finding that Uscategui abandoned the people and had knowledge that some of his officers were collaborating with paramilitaries. The forty year sentence is the highest ever to be imposed in Colombia on an officer of Uscategui’s ranking. Uscategui was also ordered to pay a fine of 10 million pesos.

The killings were committed predominantly by the Self Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba (ACCU), a paramilitary group organized by landowners. Another former army general, Rito Alejo del Rio, is in jail until a civilian court tries him on charges of murder for death squad killings during the mid-1990s.

Uscategui was initially arrested in 1999 and tried by a military court, where he was sentenced to forty months in prison for “omission.” A battalion commander who did not stop the Mapiripán massacre was convicted of murder in 2007 and sentenced to forty years in prison.

For more information, please see:

AP-Court Convicts Ex-General in Colombian Massacre-26 November 2009

The Guardian-Former Colombian General Jailed for Rule in Maripiripán Massacre-26 November 2009

BBC-Colombia Jails Death Squad General Over Massacre