Statement against impunity: Victims of false positives protest the dismissal of the Argentine Case against Álvaro Uribe Vélez
The complaints in the case against Álvaro Uribe Vélez, represented by his international advisor Bénédict De Moerloose and his lawyer Máximo Castex, have appealed the dismissal of the case by Federal Court No. 2, presided over by Judge Sebastian Ramos.
On November 7, 2023, relatives of 11 victims of crimes against humanity perpetrated in Colombia, together with three human rights organizations—the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners, CAJAR, and the Legal Corporation for Freedom—filed a lawsuit in Argentina under the principle of universal jurisdiction against ex-President Álvaro Uribe Vélez in relation to the so-called “false positives,” one of the most remembered episodes in Colombia’s recent history. The denunciation argued that between 2002 and 2008, at least 6,402 people—civilians, mostly young people from vulnerable sectors, usually attracted with promises of work—were disappeared and murdered by state security agents, and then falsely presented as guerrillas killed in combat, and that these crimes had been permitted, authorized, incited, and even promoted by the ex-President.
These extrajudicial executions were illegitimately presented as “combat deaths” in the context of supposed confrontations with guerrillas, with the purpose of “inflating” the statistics and projecting the image that the army was winning the war. The basis of the complaint is not limited to the former president’s position as “commander-in-chief of the armed forces.” On the contrary, it argues that Uribe Vélez was informed of the extrajudicial executions and that he gave orders to cover them up. It maintains that Uribe Vélez had early knowledge of this practice, as complaints from relatives, the media, and organizations were recurrent during his term. In this regard, he not only failed to take measures to stop it, but also dismissed and discredited the complaints that were filed, and even established a system of incentives and continued to promote the practice, an indicator that was the main criterion for the success of his Democratic Security policy.
After that, the process progressed slowly and was paralyzed for a time due to the delay in the response to the rogatory letters requested to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Colombian government by the court. After receiving the relevant information on the status of the cases before the courts of the country where the events took place and the case before the international court, in July 2024 the trial judge decided to admit the criminal case against the ex-President of Colombia and the victims as complainants.
Despite this, after almost two years of preliminary investigation, the judge in the case recently ordered the case to be closed and archived. This latest decision was based on the ICC’s decision, which in its preliminary investigation affirmed the existence of a functional judicial system in Colombia. The judge understood that if the ICC had already ruled out continuing with the
investigation, there were no grounds for the Argentine federal justice system to continue with it. Faced with this situation, the victims presented arguments explaining why the case should continue and not be closed. Mainly, the complaint claims that the decision does not reflect the reality of the Colombian justice system and that the court’s decision is not based on the current jurisprudence in Argentina, which understands that cases of serious international crimes must be investigated if there is no genuine, effective, and efficient investigation in the country where the events occurred.
In this regard, the complaint emphasized the situation of the Colombian jurisdiction. On the one hand, although the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP)—created in Colombia as part of the peace process—is investigating extrajudicial executions known as “false positives” in one of its macro-cases, it is not doing so against Alvaro Uribe Velez himself. This is because, although the JEP can try senior military commanders, it does not have jurisdiction over senior civilian commanders, i.e., former heads of state. Thus, it is understood that the JEP does not provide comprehensive and total justice, giving rise to a space of impunity with respect to certain political figures. On the other hand, although the Colombian Congress’s Investigation and Accusation Commission—which has jurisdiction to prosecute former presidents but has never brought a head of state to trial—is conducting two investigations against the former president, it is not doing so in a manner that genuinely concerns the facts that form the basis of the complaint filed in Argentina. The appeal explains that its political nature prevents substantial progress in investigations of this type. Not only are both cases still in the preliminary stage, but one of them is also under investigation by Congressman Hernán Cadavid, a member of the same political party as Alvaro Uribe Velez. Furthermore, as it is not an investigative body but a political entity, the Commission does not comply with due process guarantees because, in addition to the mentioned lack of impartiality and other assumptions, there is no possibility of appeal against its decisions.
Thus, the complaint argues that the principle of subsidiarity applied by the Argentine justice system has been satisfied, since there are no genuine investigations in progress in Colombia and there is no jurisdiction capable of trying these crimes. Therefore, they requested that the case proceed, based on the Argentine constitutional and legal mandate to prosecute crimes against humanity when there is no effective justice in the country where the events occurred.
In federal criminal justice, when this recourse is filed, the court of first instance reviews it and then must elevate it to the Court of Appeals. But in this case, the judge in the case ordered that the defendant be exhorted as a precondition to elevating the case to the second instance. In this regard, the prosecution hopes that the Argentine Foreign Ministry will soon receive news that Alvaro Uribe Velez has been notified and that in the first months of next year the process can continue its course in the higher court, with the hearing before it and subsequent resolution.
In this context, various international and Argentine NGOs supported the petition and urged the Court of Appeals to reopen the investigation, including the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS).
The advisor to the case also commented that it is not unusual for the Argentine federal court of first instance to dismiss cases of universal jurisdiction, even before a formal investigation begins. This has been seen in many cases that later had successful investigations—still ongoing—and went to trial—for example, in the investigations into crimes committed by the Franco regime in Spain, against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, and against the Uyghur population in China—because higher courts reversed those dismissals after the complaints were appealed.
Therefore, hope remains strong in this case. In the coming months, it is expected that the judges of the Court of Appeals will accept these arguments and decide to continue the investigation, so that the victims of false positives can, once and for all, obtain the justice they cannot find in their own country.
Argentina has established itself as one of the pioneering countries in the region in this approach to justice, as well as in the fight against impunity, and it is hoped that the southern cone country will continue to play this role in a case that is not only one of the most important currently being pursued in the country in terms of universal jurisdiction, but also one of the few that addresses crimes committed in Latin America. In a continent where impunity has been persistent and, in many cases, structural, this investigation represents a horizon of justice, reminding us that the most serious crimes can—and must—be approached with the tools of international law and with the victims at the center of the process.
Federica Carnevale, Fibgar collaborator.
Notes:
Interview with lawyer and international advisor Bénédict De Moerloose, on November 14, 2025.
World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), Colombia: International organizations call on the Court of Appeals to reactivate the investigation to bring justice to the 6,402 victims of extrajudicial executions, Statements, November 5, 2025:
https://www.omct.org/es/recursos/declaraciones/la-justicia-por-las-6402-v%C3%ADctimas-colo mbianas-de-ejecuciones-extrajudiciales-debe-continuar-organizaciones-internacionales-pedimos-a-la-c%C3%A1mara-de-apelaciones-reactivar-la-investigaci%C3%B3n-en-argentina
