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December 20, 2004
Simón Trinidad's extradition
Let’s be clear here: “Simón Trinidad,” the most senior FARC member ever to be in Colombian government custody, is going to be extradited to the United States by the end of the year.
On November 24, Colombia’s Supreme Court gave the green light to the extraditions, on drug-trafficking charges, of Trinidad (real name: Ricardo Palmera) and paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso. The rulings force President Uribe to decide promptly whether to hand them over to U.S. authorities. Uribe has now made decisions in both cases, determining that each must meet specific conditions in order to avoid extradition.
Mancuso's conditions merely require the top paramilitary figure to keep doing what he has already said he would do: keep taking part in peace negotiations and “abandon illegal activities.” Of course, what Mancuso has said he would do may not be what he actually will do. If the AUC leader continues participating in “illegal activities,” let’s hope the Colombian government doesn’t turn a blind eye.
The conditions facing the guerrilla leader’s extradition are much tougher: if Trinidad’s extradition is to be avoided, President Uribe has declared, by December 30 the FARC must free all sixty-three of the hostages it has held, in some cases since the late 1990s. The list of prominent kidnapped people – whom the guerrillas insist on exchanging for FARC prisoners in Colombian jails – includes military officers, politicians (including former senator and presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt), and three U.S. citizens captured while working for a Defense Department contractor.
There is about a zero likelihood that the FARC will agree to Uribe’s demand. The guerrillas view their hostages as an enormous bargaining chip, and have sought to hold talks in a temporarily demilitarized zone (the latest demand is the municipalities of Florida and Pradera southeast of Cali) to discuss a deal to secure their release. Though a prominent guerrilla leader, Trinidad was neither a member of the FARC’s top Secretariat nor its 18-member high command (Estado Mayor Central); the guerrilla leadership is unlikely, then, to give in to what it regards as blackmail, freeing hostages it has held for years merely to secure Trinidad’s release.
So Trinidad will be on U.S. soil sometime around New Year’s Day. If that happens, what comes next?
Gustavo Petro, a Colombian congressman and former M-19 guerrilla, put it well: President Uribe’s demand “is like attaching a bomb to each hostage.” The FARC has already shown its willingness to kill its hostages in cold blood. In May 2003, FARC captors killed the governor of Antioquia department, his peace advisor (a former defense minister) and several others during a botched army rescue attempt.
What is to stop the guerrillas from responding with equal brutality to Trinidad’s extradition, killing one or more hostages? In their calculations, doing so would set a precedent making it very costly for the government to agree to extradite future FARC prisoners. The hostages’ family members are right to be very worried. The blackmail runs both ways.
President Uribe’s ultimatum not only endangers the FARC hostages, it makes it even less likely that dialogue can be re-established anytime soon. Angelino Garzón, the governor of Valle del Cauca department, which includes the area the FARC hoped to demilitarize to hold talks (a proposal Garzón supported), laments this situation. “Extradition and a humanitarian negotiation are different dynamics. The government should carry out greater efforts to find spaces for agreement, achieve the hostages’ liberation and stimulate opportunities for peace, such as what is being done with the paramilitaries.”
The government is doing the opposite, issuing ultimatums that play to popular opinion. Uribe’s demand “isn’t going to have any positive effect on an eventual hostage liberation,” Camilo Gómez, the Colombian government’s chief peace negotiator between 2000 and 2002, told El Tiempo. “The President is playing politics instead of seeking the hostages’ freedom.”
Posted by isacson at December 20, 2004 02:28 PM
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Comments
As the UN and every legitimate human rights organization have stated, the FARC have the obligation to unconditionally release all of their hostages.
You can criticize Uribe for a lot of things, but the conditions and safety of the hostages fall to the FARC alone. If the FARC kill hostages, the blood is on their hands.
If you blame Uribe or anyone else, you're simply playing into the FARC's media game.
Posted by: Anonymous at December 21, 2004 05:26 AM
Of course the FARC would have blood on their hands. And we would go on condemning them and calling for the unconditional release of remaining hostages. But a hostage (or hostages) would also be dead, probably preventably.
This isn't Entebbe or the Japanese embassy in Lima. The FARC is hiding its hostages in remote locations behind several rings of security. Even a large-scale SAR operation in mid-2003 couldn't locate the 3 U.S. contractor-hostages. The odds are against a hard-line, all-or-nothing approach. And they're certainly against gambits like playing "chicken" with Simón Trinidad's extradition.
Besides, who is playing a "media game" right now? If the FARC weren't so incredibly inept at any strategies that don't involve violence, Colombia's media would have long been saturated with messages from, and videos of, the hostages, which would have built up pressure for a resolution of the crisis long before now. It is Colombia's sitting president who is playing the media game at the moment, playing to the gallery with unilateral prison releases and extradition ultimatums. I fear this won't end well.
Posted by: Adam Isacson ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 21, 2004 09:55 AM
A rather controversial move...I'll say that I do disagree with Uribe's action, which is indeed quite a de facto ultimatum, but then again...could he have realistically denied Trinidad's extradition outright? At most, I'd imagine that he could have delayed it in a manner similar to Mancuso's, but not much else. Eventually, Trinidad would most likely have ended up in the USA, since the moves towards a future humanitarian prisioner exchange are progressing at a very slow and even counterproductive pace.
Posted by: jcg at December 22, 2004 02:22 PM
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