The Colombian government will present to Congress a bill that offers six to eight years in prison for drug traffickers in exchange for them abandoning their activity and repairing the victimsamong other benefits, explained this Thursday the authors of the text.
"These criminal organizations must acknowledge responsibility, give truth to the victims, dismantle criminal apparatuses, hand over hostages, recruited minors, weaponsasset inventories, drug trafficking routes, asset laundering mechanisms, say who your collaborators are and if this happens they can be brought to justice" with certain benefits, said to Blu Radio the pro-government congressman Alirio Uribe, one of the editors of the text.
The bill will be presented this Thursday to a government advisory body on criminal policy issues and after its approval It will be sent for debate in Congress.
Since coming to power on August 7, President Gustavo Petro is determined to extinguish the last internal conflict on the continent through negotiations with the groups that remained in arms after the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, turned into a left-wing party.
Within the framework of his project "total peace"the government created the so-called "law of subjection and dismantling of criminal structures" that will be discussed by the legislature in the coming weeks.
The new regulations link armed groups with a hierarchical organization and without a political origin that are willing to lay down their arms. For them, the government contemplates reduced sentences of between six and eight years in prison, in addition to the possibility of keeping up to 6% of their illicit assets.
"After the stay in jail they will have an additional period of four years (…) a kind of probation with reparation activities to the victims"said the Minister of Justice, Néstor Osuna.
The bill does not modify the extradition treaties in force, nor does it create a special justice system like the one that emerged from the peace process with the FARC.
The groups with "political and belligerent status" are excluded from this regulatory framework.
Armed since 1964, the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) have been in peace negotiations with the government since November.
Petro has denounced the "failure" of the fight against drugs and proposed a new approach focused on discouraging consumption in developed countries.
After four decades of persecution of drug trafficking, Colombia continues to be the world’s largest producer of cocaine and the United States its main market.
The Clan del Golfo, the largest drug gang in the country, the ELN and the dissidents that left the peace pact are nourished by income from drug smuggling and illegal mining.
