from a civilian judge in the area asking for help to stop the slayings.136 At dawn on July 15, an estimated 200 heavily-armed paramilitaries arrived and began rounding up local authorities and forcing them to accompany them. Paramilitaries detained residents and people arriving by boat, took them to the local slaughterhouse, then bound, tortured, and executed them by slitting their throats. The first person killed, Antonio María Barrera, was hung from a hook, and paramilitaries quartered his body, throwing the pieces into the Guaviare River.137 Judge Leonardo Iván Cortés reported hearing the screams of the people they brought to the slaughterhouse to interrogate, torture, and kill throughout the five days the paramilitaries remained in the area.138 In one of the missives he sent to various regional authorities during the massacre, he wrote: “Each night they kill groups of five to six defenseless people, who are cruelly and monstrously massacred after being tortured. The screams of humble people are audible, begging for mercy and asking for help.”139 Despite Judge Cortés’s eight telephone pleas for help, neither the police nor the army reacted until the paramilitaries had left town. Then-paramilitary commander Carlos Castaño publicly took responsibility for the massacre, and promised “many more Mapiripáns” for Colombia in subsequent press interviews.140 Subsequent investigations of military involvement in the massacre resulted in the conviction of Col. Lino Sánchez (now deceased). In 2007, a judge acquitted Gen. Jaime Uscátegui, then commander of the army’s VII Brigade, on charges of homicide and aggravated kidnapping, and sentenced Major Hernán Orozco Castro to 40 years in prison.141 Orozco had previously told prosecutors that he had alerted Uscátegui 136
Ibid., para. 96.36.
137
Ibid., para. 96.40.
138
Ibid., para. 96.36.
139
Human Rights Watch, War Without Quarter (citing “Nobody wanted to stop the massacre,” Cambio, November 3, 1997).
140
Human Rights Watch, War Without Quarter, p.119.
141
Ruling in Case No. 09 – 2004- 00114, Ninth Criminal Judge of the Specialized Circuit of Bogotá,(Defendants Jaime H Uscátegui Ramírez; Hernán Orozco Castro; Miguel Enrique Vergara Salgado), November 28, 2007. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights explains that “in 1997 the municipality of Mapiripán was under the jurisdiction of the ‘Joaquín París’ Batallion of San José del Guaviare, which was attached to the VII Brigade of the National Army of Colombia, headquartered in Villavicencio. There was a team called the II Mobile Brigade that was attached to the Special Counterguerrilla Operations
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Human Rights Watch October 2008