United States ambassador Kevin Whitaker has threatened to cut aid to Colombia unless the powers of the country’s war crimes tribunal are curtailed, according to newspaper El Espectador.
The newspaper talked to almost all senators and house representatives who were present at the two breakfasts at Whitaker’s mansion in Bogota, despite the ambassador’s request to maintain confidentiality.
According to one of the senators present at a private meeting on April 1, the ambassador threatened the US could pull the plug on financial aid if Congress did not remove the war crimes tribunal’s power to shield demobilized FARC leaders from extradition as agreed in a 2016 peace deal.
Anonymous senator
Anonymous senator
The JEP currently has the powers to test evidence before allowing extradition to shield demobilized FARC leaders from being extradited on possibly bogus claims.
The court’s powers were put to the test in April last year when the US requested the extradition of FARC leader “Jesus Santrich” on an unsubstantiated drug trafficking charge.
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The April 1 meeting with the senators went relatively well because Whitaker had invited mainly conservative and far-right senators who already opposed the war crimes tribunal.
But a second meeting with the members of the House Commission that was studying Duque’s controversial objections to the JEP’s statutory law did not go down well at all.
Also in this meeting the ambassador threatened to cut aid to Colombia because, according to Whitaker, “love is money,” on representative said.
Five of the six representatives present at the meeting told El Espectador that the ambassador’s attitude became “intimidating” and “hardly diplomatic” after the lawmakers defended the war crimes tribunal’s power to keep war criminals accused of thousands of crimes against humanity in the country.
Anonymous House Representative
The lawmakers initially agreed to to the ambassador’s request to keep the meeting confidential, but changed their mind after Whitaker’s allegedly rude efforts to defend his country’s interests against that victims of the armed conflict who have claimed that Washington’s extradition policy has already frustrated justice for hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes.
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The president of the Constitutional Court, which was supposed to have dinner with the ambassador that evening, called Whitaker to tell him they would not accept the invitation. The ambassador subsequently withdrew the invitation.
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Days later, against the US ambassador’s will, the House of Representatives dismissed the objections of Duque and Whitaker and voted to return the war crimes tribunal’s statutory law to the presidential palace for signing.
The Senate is expected to do the same as soon as its president, far-right Senator Ernesto Macias, decides to put the vote on the legislative agenda.