Relatives of Pedro Julio Movilla, in an artistic intervention in honor of the leader of the Communist Party, allegedly disappeared by members of State institutions. Courtesy: Dexpierte Colectivo.
Photo: Courtesy: Dexpierte Colectivo
A request from the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective (CAJAR) asks the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) to order precautionary measures that allow the conservation of a space in the Logistics School and Counterintelligence Battalion of the National Army. In this place the buried remains of the politician Pedro Julio Movilla Galarcio, leader of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party PCC-ML and the Popular Front, in the nineties would be found. In turn, the human rights organization urgently demands the determination of the exact location where the remains are located and their immediate exhumation.
Pedro Julio Movilla Galarcio, also a union leader, disappeared on May 13, 1993, after saying goodbye to his wife, Candelaria Vergara, and heading towards 68th Avenue and Primera de Mayo Avenue to leave his daughter, Yenny del Carmen, at the entrance of the Jhon F. Kennedy school at 8:00 am After that moment they did not know his whereabouts again, says his wife Candelaria, who pointed out that members of the National Army belonging to the XX Brigade, who were responsible for the forced disappearance, were They operated in what is now the Logistics School and Counterintelligence Battalion, in the San Cristóbal Sur neighborhood of Bogotá.
The Attorney General’s Office, according to the file, carried out judicial inspections of the facilities of the National Intelligence Directorate, in which it was able to verify the evidence that evidenced the intelligence work carried out against Pedro Movilla, which described his physical appearance, the places where frequented, information about his wife and details of the follow-up work. On June 22, 2022, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held, through a ruling, the Colombian State responsible for the forced disappearance of Movilla, and ordered to continue with the relevant search efforts to achieve the discovery of his remains.
According to statements provided by José Leonairo Dorado – a sergeant who belonged to the XX Brigade – before the JEP, Pedro Julio Movilla had been taken to the Battalion facilities to be tortured and murdered. Dorado’s statements have been key to clarifying this crime, and other complaints made historically by the human rights movement and the report presented to the JEP on the actions of the XX Brigade. Also, CAJAR asks to link the Ministry of Defense with the objective of providing a report on the current state of the Battalion’s facilities, and the tunnels that exist there and that apparently connected with the old road to Villavicencio, which could have served as runners to remove people who would later be disappeared.
The fact that the facilities of the Logistics School and Army Counterintelligence Battalion are declared a site of forensic interest by the JEP will serve to guarantee the right of Movilla’s relatives to the dignified delivery of his remains by of the State. In addition, it will end a search of more than 31 years. If this precautionary measure is achieved to protect the possible place where Movilla was disappeared, this would be added to the other 16 burial sites protected by the JEP and requested by the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE).
The agility of the JEP in response to this request for precautionary measures will be essential to guarantee that the military does not alter the site of forensic interest and, thus, the body or bodies presumably located in the Counterintelligence Battalion disappear, since “if said place is not protected, The rights of the victims of forced disappearance would be violated, as well as the real establishment of their rights to truth and justice, which have a special degree of value when it comes to forced disappearances,” declares CAJAR.
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