The Mariscal Operation was the largest mass detention in the region and had the most significant impact on rural communities, according to my interlocutors. This operation is still in the memory of the victims of the arbitrary detentions and rural communities. Some victims of the detentions told me that they were detained under the Mariscal Operation even though I found that they were detained in a different military operation. Not all victims of the detentions knew the name of the operation by which they were detained.
In August 2003, the National Police, the CTI from the Attorney General’s Office and the Marine Infantry carried out the Mariscal Sucre Operation, involving around 600 men from the National Police, which led to the detention of 156 inhabitants of Ovejas, Colosó, Chalán, Los Palmitos, Corozal and Sincelejo (El Meridiano 2003g). The detainees were considered suspects of being milicianos and guerrilla collaborators of the FARC, or in some cases ERP and ELN guerrillas, and included students, doctors, professors, public drivers, and mainly campesinos living in rural and urban areas of these municipalities.
The Mariscal Sucre Operation illustrates not only the conflicting workings of different state institutions and agents at the regional and national level regarding the mass detentions but also how detentions, the investigation, and trials caused a deep sense of injustice and distrust in the state, especially among the detainees and their relatives.
The process began with an intelligence report of the National Police, the testimonies of former FARC guerrillas, and the warrants for detentions issued by the Fiscalía. In the following weeks, the Fiscalía 16 Seccional ordered preventive detentions against 128 inhabitants. After the detainees’ lawyers appealed this decision, the Fiscal Delegado ante el Tribunal Superior de
Sincelejo (Delegated Prosecutor before the High Tribunal), Orlando Pacheco, revoked the
preventive measures after considering that there was not enough evidence.
I traveled to Bogota to interview the former fiscal Pacheco. He told me: “the evidence at that stage was a report of the military intelligence, which did not have value as evidence, and the testimonies of former FARC guerrillas … however, the Fiscalía did not verify or receive directly sworn testimonies before the detention warrants were issued. I analyzed each testimony, and they were full of inconsistencies and contradictions… there were also other irregularities […]” (Orlando Pacheco, April, Bogotá, 2018). The 128 detainees were released in November 2003 (El
Meridiano 2003h).
However, the Fiscal General (Attorney General), Luis Camilo Osorio, did not agree with this decision and said that the fiscal Pacheco “no estuvo a la altura de sus funciones [did not measure up to his functions]” (El Meridiano 2003i). El Fiscal General separated Pacheco from his position as fiscal and initiated an investigation against him for prevaricato por acción (breach of duty) (El Meridiano 2003j). Months later, the Supreme Court of Justice acquitted Pacheco and stated that his actions were in accordance with the law.
In June 2004, the fiscal who was appointed to continue the investigation presented an accusation of rebellion against 134 individuals, out of the 156 originally detained. Most of them were detained again and sent to La Vega jail in Sincelejo. In February 2006, and after the trials, the Juzgado Penal del Circuito (Primera Instancia) convicted 28 of these individuals of rebellion,
and three more of being accomplices; the remaining 103 individuals were acquitted.19 Those
acquitted were released while the convicted remained in jail. After the appeal of the Fiscalía and lawyers, in June 2007, the Tribunal Superior of Sincelejo (Segunda Instancia) affirmed the conviction of rebellion for 25 of these individuals, acquitted three who were previously convicted of rebellion and acquitted one more who had previously convicted of being an accomplice. The Tribunal also convicted 44 of the individuals who had been acquitted of rebellion by the Juzgado
Penal del Circuito, and one individual who had been acquitted previously was convicted of being
an accomplice. Arrest warrants were issued for these individuals. In total, as a result of the decision of the Tribunal Superior regarding the Mariscal Operation 69 people were convicted of rebellion, two more were convicted of being accomplices while 61 were acquitted.20
The Juzgado Penal del Circuito and the Tribunal Superior de Sincelejo based their decisions in the testimonies of demobilized guerrilla members, particularly the testimony of a former member of the FARC, even though these testimonies were highly criticized by the fiscal
delegado who revoked the preventive measures and by the lawyers of the detainees. The critiques
were based on several grounds, including the personal interest of the demobilized ex-combatants who received benefits for collaborating with justice, the contradictory, imprecise and vague character of some testimony, and the failure of the former FARC member in recognizing many of the detainees in lineups.
One lawyer, who was in charge of the defense of several accused individuals in the Mariscal Operation, sees it as an “adefesio legal” (legal monstrosity). In his words: “people were
19 Juzgado Segundo Penal del Circuito. Sentencia de Primera Instancia, Sincelejo. Febrero 3 de 2006.
RAD.2003-00207-00. Proceso seguido contra Luis Enrique Aguilar y otros por el delito de rebelión.
20 Tribunal Superior del Distrito Judicial de Sincelejo, Sala Penal de Decisión. Junio 25 de 2007. Radicación
convicted without evidence. The only evidence they constructed was a false testimony of a reinserted former guerrilla member. This witness was used for everything [also for other cases different than the Mariscal Operation] …” (Remberto Benítez, Lawyer, Sincelejo, January 2018). Individual and mass detentions were not only used as a counterinsurgency mechanism that could purportedly be used to dismantle the network of milicianos, but became a mechanism to control populations, mainly through the use of fear. Campesinos and other inhabitants living in areas where guerrillas were present could also be considered suspects of being milicianos or collaborators, and consequently, be detained and incarcerated.
The detentions involved not only physical forms of violence, which were present in some cases, but also other forms of violence and demonstrations of state power. The latter is evidenced by the disproportionate display of power and force by state agents in the detentions of inhabitants, the presentation of them in the media as suspects of being milicianos or guerrilla supporters before any serious investigation, trial, or sentence, and other forms of mistreatment and humiliation.
The mass detentions also involved arbitrariness, other human rights violations, and different forms of state violence involving several state agents from different institutions, including not only members of the police, and the military but also fiscales and judges. The violence connected to the mass arbitrary detentions was not limited to the detentions themselves and the spread of terror that they produced in rural communities but also ran through the seemingly more ordinary workings of the state taking place through prosecutors, prisons, judges, and courts.
In this sense, there was an attempt to cover up the arbitrariness and irregularities of the detentions and incarceration with the appearance of legality through the use of prosecutors, trials, sentences, witnesses, and legal documents, as illustrated in the Mariscal Operation. In this context, members of not only the military and the police but also of the judicial system were put at the
service of the counterinsurgency state practices, showing the continuum between more spectacular forms of violence carried out in campesino communities during the detentions and more ordinary workings of the state such as those inside prisons and courts. In these sites, the legal and the illegal became blurred, for example, through the use of unreliable or fabricated testimonies. In a similar vein, Feldman (1991) sees arrest and interrogation as integral components of the counterinsurgency strategy in the case of Northern Ireland. He also refers to the gradual reorganization of the judicial system into a counterinsurgency apparatus (p. 87).
To understand the effects of the detentions, it is important to consider their specific characteristics and how they operated as a method of exercising state power not only over the detainees but also over communities.
4.4 State terror and the impact of arbitrary detentions on campesino victims, families and