Murder, Threats, Bribery : ‘Law of Gun’ Endangers Colombian Justice System

The brutal slaying of two judges and 10 judicial employees by a rural death squad in January jolted Colombians with the frightening realization that their country has become a land where the law of the gun prevails.

Colombian courts are a shambles. Murder, threats, bribery, inefficiency and under-funding have broken down the justice system, virtually giving legal immunity to growing hordes of killers, drug traffickers and other criminals.

Many Colombians fear that as justice fades, a dark night of criminal anarchy is closing in on the nation’s democratic institutions.

“The institutions of this country are crumbling so rapidly that we don’t even know what is happening,” Eduardo Velez, a sociologist who has studied the problems of the justice system, said. “They are killing judges, and no one does anything.”

According to figures compiled by the news agency Colprensa, at least 36 judges have been assassinated since the late 1970s, many of them in connection with drug cases.

The number does not include 11 Supreme Court justices who were killed in an eruption of violence in November, 1985, when guerrillas invaded the court’s Bogota headquarters. Many officials believe that the so-called Medellin cartel of cocaine traffickers financed the invasion by a leftist guerrilla group known as M-19.

Another Supreme Court justice died of a heart attack at home after the attack, and yet another was assassinated by paid gunmen in 1986. Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara was assassinated in 1984. Numerous investigators and other judicial officials also have been killed.

In the latest major attack on the justice system, the victims were members of a special judicial commission working near the city of Barrancabermeja, 160 miles north of Bogota.

The commission, traveling in two utility vehicles, was conducting a field investigation of 22 killings and 17 disappearances blamed on “paramilitary groups,” death squads whose sponsors are believed to include ranchers, drug lords and military officers acting unofficially.

Such groups have proliferated in the vacuum left by the collapsing justice system. Depending on who sponsors them, they kill suspected leftist guerrillas, politicians, union members, common criminals and others.

A squad of about 40 armed men, claiming to be guerrillas, intercepted the judicial commission Jan. 18 near the village of La Rochela. The armed men were friendly at first, offering to help the commission in its investigation. They persuaded judicial police agents on the commission to put aside their weapons. The two groups had lunch together in La Rochela.

But after lunch, all 15 commission members were put into their vehicles, with their hands tied, and then the gunmen opened fire on the vehicles with automatic rifles.

Two judges, two clerks, six judicial police agents and two drivers were killed. Some who were only wounded in the initial barrage were finished off with shots fired from point-blank range. Three wounded agents survived by playing dead.

The massacre first was reported as a guerrilla attack, but testimony from the survivors and other evidence soon made it clear that it was the work of a death squad. Beyond that, evidence was scarce. Frightened peasants in the area said they had seen nothing.

Message to Lay Off

Carlos Eduardo Lozano, the Justice Ministry official in charge of criminal investigation, said the killers were sending a clear message to the authorities, “for us not to investigate crimes that they don’t want investigated.”

After the massacre, other judges in the Barrancabermeja region requested permission to leave. Lozano said he persuaded them to stay on until they could be transferred and replaced.

“The hard part is to replace them,” he said.

Alfredo Vazquez, president of Colombia’s Permanent Commission on Human Rights, said the January massacre was an “extraordinarily grave” blow to an already paralyzed justice system.

Increasingly, Vazquez said, killers act with impunity. He said that more than 1,000 members and sympathizers of the Marxist-led Patriotic Union party have been killed, but none of the killers have been convicted.

“The impunity in Colombia is terrifying,” Vazquez said. “We are faced with an abysmal phenomenon of collective insecurity.”

In the justice system, the lack of security often makes judges reluctant to judge and witnesses unwilling to testify. The Omnibus Drug Bill recently approved by the U.S. Congress provides $5 million for judicial protection in Colombia. But no one believes that $5 million will be enough to ensure the safety of judges, court officials and witnesses.

Judicial Shortcomings

And while protection is an urgent need, analysts agree that rehabilitation of the justice system will require a series of other remedies.

To begin with, the Colombian system has no prosecuting attorney. The office of government prosecutor or district attorney, as an adversary of the defense attorney, is not a fundamental element of the so-called civil law system on which justice in most Western nations outside of the English-speaking countries is based.

Instead, “judges of instruction”--investigating magistrates--are responsible for compiling evidence in determining whether an accused person should be brought to trial. The low-paid judges of instruction are often inexperienced attorneys fresh out of law school. Many judges at other levels are also ill-prepared. One study found that 70% of all penal judges did not know what constituted proof of guilt under Colombian law.

A proposed constitutional amendment being considered by the congress would establish a public prosecutor’s office to replace the judges of instruction. Advocates hope that the amendment, which is expected to pass later this year, will give the government stronger leverage for bringing criminals to justice.

Judges also are burdened with heavy caseloads and are desperately short on clerical and investigative help. Bogota alone has a backlog of 150,000 criminal cases awaiting investigation.

Just to find a given case in the vast piles of paper is a monumental task. Authorities are in the process of putting the records in computerized files that they hope will make retrieval easier.

“Six new pages a day come to each judge; it’s terrible,” said Graciela de Pulido, a Justice Ministry official who works with judges of instruction.

Fourteen months ago, the government created a new judicial police corps to help judges with criminal investigations. The corps has grown to 300 agents and technicians and continues to expand, but 12 agents have been killed already.

Critics of the justice system contend that the Colombian penal code and rules of evidence must be rewritten. As they stand, they are riddled with loopholes.

“They tie up proceedings and confuse the judges, and the defense lawyers take advantage of those defects to get their clients off,” said Carlos Castro Guevara, an official in the Procuraduria General, a watchdog agency that oversees the judicial and executive branches of government.

Colombia’s infamous drug lords hire the best available lawyers, including former Supreme Court justices. If their attorneys cannot get them off legally, the drug lords turn to bribes. In a 1987 survey of 401 judges, 26.7% reported receiving bribe offers.

Widespread Corruption

“This figure, to say the least, is scandalously worrisome . . . a symptom of moral decomposition,” said the survey report, issued by the independent think tank Instituto SER.

“There is a high degree of corruption at all levels” of the justice system, confirmed Francisco Bernal, an official in the Procuraduria General .

If a judge resists the bribes, he and those close to him are threatened, said a foreign diplomat who monitors the justice system.

“There is nobody, absolutely nobody, who will risk the life of his wife, his kids, relatives and friends,” the diplomat said. “And that’s the final step. It always comes to that in the end.”

Many judges go into hiding. Several have left the country, including one who charged Pablo Escobar, a leader of the Medellin cartel, with ordering the killing of newspaper publisher Guillermo Cano in December, 1986. Although he is not under arrest, Escobar could be tried in absentia if a judge were brave enough to do it.

“No one will go after Escobar,” another diplomat predicted. “He’s got incredible power, and he’s completely ruthless.”

Methods used by drug traffickers to evade justice have spread to other criminal sectors, a foreign aid official said. “People realize that they can operate with impunity by using the same methods, and it is destroying the justice system.”

Judicial Bravery

Despite the dim outlook, remnants of justice still flicker bravely in some courts. A judge in Bogota who has received several death threats in drug-trafficking cases vowed in an interview that she will not be intimidated.

“I must carry out my mission no matter what,” she said.

The judge, who asked not to be identified by name, received her first death threat last year when she was trying a drug-trafficking case.

“A letter, a note, came under the door of my apartment,” she recalled. It threatened her and her family if she did not absolve an accused trafficker.

“My husband said right then that I should resign,” she said. “I told him no.”

Instead, she said, she has tried to help her husband understand that her mission as a judge includes facing the very real possibility of assassination.