Colombia peace tribunal under budget and threat pressure

Colombia's peace tribunal is facing budget cuts and threats against judges as it continues work on crimes from the country's long internal conflict, its new president Danilo Rojas told AFP.

Rojas, a magistrate who took over as president of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace earlier this month, said the tribunal was in a “very difficult moment.” He called planned budget cuts by President Abelardo de la Espriella a “hard blow.”

The tribunal, known as the JEP, was created under Colombia's 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. It handles the worst crimes committed during more than half a century of conflict involving state forces, Marxist rebels, drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries.

De la Espriella, a critic of the peace deal, wants to cut the JEP's budget by more than $50 million in 2027 and abolish it in 2028. Rojas said the cuts could slow justice by reducing the number of lawyers and could “immediately paralyze the proceedings.”

Rojas also said hostility toward the peace deal had fed a smear campaign against the tribunal, and that some judges had received death threats or been followed.

The JEP began operations in 2018 and handed down its first sentences last year after seven years of investigations. Ten former FARC leaders received eight years of community service over their role in tens of thousands of kidnappings, and 12 former soldiers received similar punishment over the killing of thousands of civilians falsely presented as guerrillas.