translated from Spanish: Former FARC guerrillas and victims of The Walnut attack merge into a hug in the JEP

Former guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and victims of the attack 17 years ago on the club El Nogal de Bogotá, which left 38 dead and 198 wounded, have melted on Friday in a hug in the framework of a commemorative jurisdiction in the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). A group of victims of the El Nogal bombing, led by Bertha Lucia Fries, has handed the JEP, the Truth Commission and the Missing Persons Search Unit a report on the events. “We want to know what happened,” she claimed. The president of the JEP, Patricia Linares, noted that “each of the facts that the victims tell us in the reports are very valuable inputs for this Jurisdiction in order to ensure non-impunity and reparation for the victims”. As reported by the DPA agency, the event was attended by the former head of the FARC, Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, alias ‘Timochenko’, and the former guerrilla Julián Gallo, ‘Carlos Lozada’, as well as the former paramilitaries Freddy Rendón and Rodrigo Pérez Alzate.” On behalf of those of us who are part of the FARC at some point, we apologise for this act and reiterate our commitment to the implementation of the peace agreement. We ask the victims to hopefully be forgiven,” said ‘Carlos Lozada’. At the end of the act the five have melted into a hug in what the JEP itself has valued and Twitter as “an act of reconciliation.” “I am touched by the embrace you have just given yourselves,” said the director of the Missing Persons Search Unit, Marine Light Monzón.La JEP is the transitional justice devised by the FARC and the Government in the peace agreement signed in 2016. It establishes alternative sanctions and lesser penalties for all those who confess their crimes, although those who refuse to contribute truth face 20 years in prison.

Original source in Spanish