April 1, 2021
Colombia’s prosecution said Wednesday that it would open a criminal investigation against a leading opposition candidate in next year’s presidential election.
Former Medellin Mayor Sergio Fajardo and other leading opposition politicians dismissed the corruption allegations of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which is led by one of President Ivan Duque‘s best friends.
In a press release, the prosecution said Fajardo allegedly broke the law in 2013 when the politician signed off on a $77 million loan as governor of his native Antioquia province.
This loan turned out to be more expensive than anticipated after a 2014 drop in global commodity prices sunk the value of the peso against the dollar.
Victims want Colombia to strip military war criminals of medals
March 17, 2021
The families of civilians who were executed by Colombia’s security forces to inflate results want the commanders responsible of these atrocities to be stripped of their medals, they said Tuesday.
The representative of the Association of Mothers of False Positives (Mafapo), Jacqueline Castillo, said that victims of her organization want the security forces to revoke decorations of war criminals as a means of compensation.
Castillo expressed the victims’ wish during the presentation of a report to the war crimes tribunal and the truth commission on the victimization of family members of more than 6,400 civilians who were executed and falsely presented as combat kills.
Ivan Roberto Duque, a.k.a. “Ernesto Baez” (Image: Truth Commission)
The BCB was one of the AUC’s most powerful paramilitary groups until the demobilization of their more than 7,600 members between 2003 and 2006.
The BCB’s paramilitary groups were active throughout Colombia with major involvement in drug trafficking, the mining sector and the security forces.
The BCB’s late political leader, Ivan Roberto Duque, died in 2019, three says after committing to cooperate the Truth Commission about the crimes of the organization he led with Jimenez.
Before his death, Duque estimated that the BCB and other paramilitary groups’ political influence reached so far they had half of Congress in their pocket in 2002.
Opposition leader favorite as countdown to Colombia s 2022 elections begins colombiareports.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from colombiareports.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
March 15, 2021
Colombia’s Congress will resume sessions on Tuesday on the first day of what promises to be an extraordinarily tense election year.
The lawmakers will return from their three-month Christmas recess while the country is trying to recover from the worst economic crash in recorded history.
One issue thornier than the other
The 2022 elections promised to be tense before the pandemic as President Ivan Duque and his far-right party were being investigated for alleged fraud in the last elections before the pandemic already.
The peace process that kicked off after a 2016 peace deal with demobilized FARC guerrillas entered in crisis before Duque took office.