In February 2010, the Clinic issued a report calling on the United States to reform its policies and practices regarding the prosecutions of extradited Colombian warlords to better support Colombia’s efforts to hold these paramilitaries accountable for mass atrocities. Authored by Clinic students, the report, Truth Behind Bars: Colombian Paramilitary Leaders in U.S. Custody, finds that the extraditions of paramilitary leaders have adverse consequences for Colombia’s ongoing human rights and corruption investigations and undermine U.S. counter-narcotics efforts. The report recommends that the United States incentivize the extradited leaders’ cooperation with accountability efforts and improve cooperation with Colombian prosecutors and judges.
The extradited defendants in U.S. custody include the top commanders of Colombia’s most powerful paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), formed decades ago to fight left-wing guerrillas. The group morphed into a powerful drug-trafficking network that massacred, forcibly disappeared, and tortured thousands of civilians, according to Colombian law enforcement. The United States has extradited 30 AUC members on drug-related charges. After the report was issued, Clinic students traveled to Washington D.C. with Clinic faculty, to brief U.S. officials, academics, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations. In meetings with congressional representatives and staffers, the students discussed practical recommendations to reform U.S. policy towards criminal defendants implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Since the 2008 extraditions, the Clinic also has been working to secure the opportunity for Colombian victims of paramilitary violence to participate in U.S. drug proceedings against top paramilitary commanders. In partnership with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR) and Colombian human rights organizations, the Clinic represents the relatives of individuals disappeared and murdered by paramilitary groups in furtherance of their drug. Under the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), victims have the right to be notified of all public court proceedings, confer with prosecutors, and to be heard regarding a plea or sentence. IHRLC’s clients seek to participate in criminal proceedings in order to tell their stories and obtain information from the defendants about their crimes.
On November 6, 2009, the Clinic and WSGR filed a motion in district court for recognition of our clients as crime victims of drug conspiracy charges against Hernán Giraldo Serna. Paramilitary commander Giraldo Serna was considered one of Colombia’s top cocaine traffickers and has been indicted by Colombian prosecutors for hundreds of murders and raping dozens of women and girls. Giraldo Serna was one of the Colombian warlords extradited in 2008. The Clinic’s clients are the widow and daughter of Julio Henríquez, an activist who was training farmers to grow legal crops instead of coca (cocaine’s main ingredient) in an area under Giraldo Serna’s control. Giraldo Serna ordered his troops to disappear, torture, and execute Henríquez in 2001. Henríquez’s body was found six years later.
On August 7, 2015, the judge denied our clients victim status finding that the Henríquez murder was “too factually attenuated” from the conspiracy for which Giraldo Serna was convicted. Counsel for the victims petitioned the D.C. Circuit for a writ of mandamus arguing that the district court erred in its interpretation of the CVRA and its consideration of evidence and requesting that the court reverse the district court’s order. Both the government and defense counsel opposed the petition.
On October 16, 2015, the D.C. Circuit found that the district court abused its discretion, and ordered the district court to use correct legal standards to consider anew whether the Henríquez family was entitled to full rights under the CVRA. On March 14, 2016—after a six-year court battle—a federal judge granted the Clinic’s clients the right to participate in the criminal proceedings against Giraldo Serna.
The Clinic’s work representing Colombian victims received front page coverage by the New York Times on Sunday, September 11, 2016. The New York Times investigation illuminates what happened to a group of Colombian paramilitary leaders after they were extradited to the United States. It reveals that “[m]ost were handsomely rewarded for pleading guilty and cooperating with the American authorities; they were treated as first-time offenders despite extensive criminal histories in Colombia; and they received credit for time served there, even though the official rationale for their extradition was that they were committing crimes in Colombian jails.” Some received permission to live with their families in the United States.
On March 3, 2017, Henríquez’s widow and two daughters became the first foreign victims to be heard in a U.S. court regarding an international drug conspiracy case (see coverage by NPR, the Guardian, Courthouse News Service, and TeleSur). In three hours of testimony, they provided grim details about Henriquez’s disappearance and the harms they suffered. Before sentencing Giraldo Serna to sixteen years, Judge Walton commended the Henriquez family for their courage and emphasized that impact their testimony had on his decision.
Read the full report: Truth Behind Bars: Colombian Paramilitary Leaders in U.S. Custody