A Colombian judge denied that Colombia uses torture in an appearance
Friday before a Denmark court where seven Danes are charged with
providing financial support to the FARC by selling t-shirts.
Former president of
the Colombian Constitutional Tribunal, Eduardo Montealegre Lynett,
testified a day after the Danish High Court of Appeals rejected as evidence 13 verdicts on the grounds they may have been been obtained with the help of torture, reported French press agency AFP.
“Colombia is a country of laws,” Lynett said to the court through an interpreter. “All practice of torture is illegal.”
The death penalty does not exist in Colombia, the judge noted, but
admitted that the state bore some responsibility in cases like the 2007
La Rochela massacre of 12 judicial commission workers by a paramilitary
group, drawing jeers from the defense.
“It’s paradoxical that this witness claims that Colombia is a rule
of law and recognizes at the same time several cases where the
Colombian State was found guilty of murder”, Michael Schoelardt, one
of the defendants and founder of the t-shirt company “fighters+lovers”
told AFP.
The defendents were acquitted in December after a Copenhagen
tribunal did not find enoughevidence to declare FARC a terrorist
organization, but a prosecutorial appeal reopened the case.
Each of the seven are linked to Danish clothing company
fighters+lovers, closed in 2006 by Danish police after it was announced
that a fifth of each t-shirts price was sent to support the FARC-linked
Resistance Radio and a Palestinian Liberation Organization graphic
design workshop.
The verdict is expected September 11.
