In precarious conditions: this is the state of Colombian mercenaries in Haiti

On July 30, the humanitarian commission of the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the office of the mediator arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to verify the conditions of the 18 mercenaries captured for the assassination of the president of that country.

While initially it was known that the captured were fed, this Tuesday, August 3, the report of the office of the mediator was revealed after analyzing their physical and mental health, and the conditions of detention in which they are. Three of them are seriously injured.

According to the document, the ex-combatants are isolated and overcrowded, they sleep on the floor, they only eat twice a day and drinking water is limited. Where they remain handcuffed 24 hours a day, there is a hallway with an adjoining bathroom, which is approximately six meters long by two wide and does not have access to sunlight.

Likewise, during the visit, it was observed that they lack procedural guarantees in the legal proceedings in which they are the subject of an investigation.

The mercenaries met for nearly four hours with the Deputy People’s Advocate, a lawyer from the Public Defender’s Office and the leader of Colombians Abroad, who make up the Commission. The meeting took place in two.

“Some detainees complained that they had been beaten, although when questioned specifically they could not clearly distinguish whether these were the beatings received at the time of capture. For their part, several of them claimed to be cured of the blows during the capture ”, he reads in the document.

In the report, a detailed description was made of the conditions in which each national finds himself. In the first place, John Jairo Suárez and Gersain Mendivelso had signs of fatigue, weight loss and redness of the wrists due to the handcuffs, as well as Francisco Uribe and Alejandro Giraldo, who also had injuries.

“One of the detainees in the second group (Francisco Uribe) was wearing jeans-type pants, a T-shirt and flip-flops; and the other, Alejandro Giraldo, shorts, crocs type shoes and a T-shirt. Both unshaven and shared the same wives. They claimed that the security personnel never remove their handcuffs and that they must go to any place in handcuffs ”, says the report.

When meeting with Germán Alejandro Rivera and Jheiner Alberto Carmona could note that Rivera has difficulty moving, as he has an injured foot, however, in general, they are fine.

Edwin Blanquicet He has stitches in his hand and his mobility is difficult due to a fracture in one of his fingers and next to Carlos Giovanni Guerrero They have sores on their hands from the friction of the metal with the meat. Moreover, the latter is nervous.

In the police station where they are, the ex-soldiers were interrogated on several occasions by the Haitian police authorities and by the FBI, however, “None of these interrogations were developed with the assistance of a lawyer practicing technical defense.”

For his part, the mediator, Carlos Camargo, asked to guarantee the human rights of ex-soldiers detained in this country.

“The legal assistance and the technical defense of the 18 Colombians detained in Haiti is urgent, to guarantee the respect of their fundamental rights and mainly due process and the right to defense which, until now, are unknown to them”Camargo said.

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