MOVICE Leader Carmelo Agámes Freed

30.09.11

September 26, 2011

By the Fundación Comité de Solidaridad con los Presos Políticos (Political Prisoner Solidarity Committee Foundation)

Today, after three years of imprisonment without due process, Carmelo Agámez has been freed. Because of his work with MOVICE (the Movement of Victims of State Crimes) he has suffered this political and judicial persecution.

Carmelo was arrested on November 13th 2008, in his native department of Sucre, and falsely accused of belonging to paramilitary groups. It bears mention that Carmelo Agámez has frequently denounced paramilitary activity in the region.

From its beginnings, the prosecution of Carmelo was marked by irregularities. One of the first suspicious incidents occurred several days before his arrest, when several armed men (none of whom presented a police warrant) broke into his home. Later, on November 15th, he appeared with his lawyer at the District Attorney’s office in Sincelejo, Sucre, intending to bring to light that episode and submit a complaint asking for official protection.

In the course of the trial Camilo’s lawyer, José Humberto Torres of the Political Prisoner Solidarity Committee Foundation (FCSPP), has exhausted all legal resources. He has petitioned for Camilo’s release to house arrest only to have it denied, despite the fact that numerous confessed paramilitaries and corrupt officials (“para-politicians”) involved in identical trials have been granted that meager concession.

Almost three years later, after what some human rights activists have called an “institutional kidnapping”, Carmelo Agámez has been released after serving a sentence without ever being convicted. In other words, after being held unjustly and without evidence, he has served the same amount of time in prison as he would have had he been found guilty.

Who is Carmelo Agámez?

“Carmelo Agámez is a human rights activist and a leader of MOVICE in San Onofre, Sucre. He has dedicated his life to denouncing the crimes committed by paramilitaries and corrupt politicians (…) In the 1980s he was active in the Patriotic Union, and was the target of an attempted assassination for his political activities, and was later imprisoned and exiled. With the rest of his compatriots he then suffered through the AUC’s (the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) reign of terror and slavery, under the command of Rodrigo Mercado Peluffo, also known as Cadena. He watched as his friends and neighbors were taken to the Palmar ranch, where they were tortured, killed, and buried in mass graves—crimes which were ordered by the department’s political bosses. However Carmelo, unlike those who went along with these crimes, began a quiet resistance. He organized the other campesinos whose land had been seized by the paramilitaries, helped train a new group of leaders, and when the conditions were ripe led a revolt that finally broke through the collective fear imposed by the paramilitaries.”

The Political Prisoner Solidarity Committee Foundation, MOVICE, and various international organizations have worked in solidarity with Carmelo Agámez, bringing to light the injustices committed against him.

For this reason today we are happy to announce his release and we welcome him warmly, although much work remains to be done; his trial is just beginning, paradoxically, after he has preemptively been punished despite his innocence.

Today the FCSPP renews its commitment to continue in its defense of Carmelo, working to prove his innocence and to clear his name.

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