There will be a debate in Congress for the Colombian mercenaries around the world, especially for what happened in Haiti.

The Senate plenary approved on Tuesday the proposal presented by Senator Iván Cepeda, to summon the Minister of National Defense, Diego Molano Aponte, to a debate on political control; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Martha Lucía Ramírez; and the Superintendent of Surveillance and Private Security, Orlando Alfonso Clavijo. Senior officials must be held accountable for measures adopted by the national government prevent the participation of retired Colombian military personnel in mercenary activities abroad.

“I announce that I will send a formal request to President Iván Duque, so that the Colombian government officially apologizes to the Haitian people for the participation of national mercenaries in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse”, Senator Cepeda said this morning, via his Twitter account.

Cepeda formulated three questionnaires, which were approved in plenary, the ministers to respond to each of the 26 retired soldiers who participated in the assassination of the President of the Republic of Haiti.

The questionnaires aim to clarify the measures that the Colombian state has adopted to prevent the recruitment, use and funding of retired military personnel as mercenaries, and their hiring by foreign companies to carry out operations that may infringe the sovereignty of other states.

Likewise, Minister Diego Molano will be asked if “The Colombian mercenaries had a working or teaching relationship with the Colombian War College, or if they took courses or internships in this institution”.

For its part the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Martha Lucía Ramírez, must report on acts of international judicial cooperation carried out by the Colombian State, in relation to the events that occurred in Port-au-Prince on July 7.

Senator Cepeda also asked the chancellor to explain why the Colombian state has not acceded to the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, approved by the United Nations General Assembly December 4, 1989.

In the coming days, the date of the debate on the political control of the national government in this legislative cell will be known.

The Colombian mercenary market

A few years ago, it was known that there were hundreds of military nationals who went to different countries of the world to fight in foreign conflicts.

This was revealed in 2014 by a journalistic investigation of The New York Times this made visible how the United Arab Emirates sent hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Yemen.

“Mercenaries are an attractive option for rich countries who want to participate in war, but whose citizens may not want to fight.”Sean McFate, member of the Atlantic Council and author of the book “The Modern Mercenary”, told this American media.

They say Colombian soldiers, selected from a brigade of around 1,800 Latin American soldiers training at a military base in the Emirates, were taken to Yemen. “The UAE officials prefer to recruit Colombian troops because they consider that they have more experience on the battle front, because for decades they fought the Farc, in the jungles of Colombia”, they point out.

There are also reports of these mercenaries in the Colombian media. In 2015, El País de Cali portrayed one of these cases. It was about a young man who, at the age of 20, had graduated as an army non-commissioned officer from the Inocencio Chincá de Tolemida school and had been sent as a third corporal to Cauca. He patrolled the central cordillera: in Toribío, Tacueyó, the Páramo de Santo Domingo; He was in the area where Operation Blue Fire took place to kill the guerrilla leader ‘Alfonso Cano’. At the age of 22 he resigned from the military and months later went to Afghanistan as an entrepreneur for a private company fighting against Muslim extremists..

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