Press conference after the last round of peace talks with the Colombian government for this year, in Caraca, on December 12, 2022.LEONARDO FERNANDEZ VILORIA (REUTERS)
The government's chief negotiator, Otty Patiño, announced on Tuesday that eight members of the National Liberation Army (ELN) will be released from the prisons where they are serving their sentences and released for humanitarian reasons.
This is the first announcement that has been made regarding the release of the ELN since peace negotiations began with former President Juan Manuel Santos, which were later interrupted.
Patiño explained to
Blu Radio
that this Monday the first cycle of negotiations between the Government of Colombia and the ELN concluded with the announcement that 20 people who were in power of the armed group have been released.
However, the head of the ELN delegation, Israel Ramírez, alias Pablo Beltrán, did not offer details about the identities of those released.
In addition, he has assured that there are people from the ELN in prisons in inhumane situations, with terminal illnesses, confined and without good medical attention that the Government is going to get out of prisons.
“They are almost dying people.
It has been proposed that these people can be in their homes with home confinement, ”said Patiño.
The chief negotiator has explained that approving these releases is now in the hands of the judges and that the guerrilla members who obtain these benefits will go to jail and will be monitored with bracelets.
“The surveillance of Inpec or the mechanisms that exist to guarantee this situation are bracelets for those who are paying house arrest.
It is the condition, in addition, certified by doctors and by the entity itself so that the judges can determine that this change is warranted ”, Patiño has maintained.
These types of gestures, such as the unilateral release of kidnapped persons by the ELN, tend to help build trust between the parties to a negotiation, and also provide tangible examples to the rest of society of what can be achieved in an eventual agreement. .
But they can also spark debate, as has already happened in this nascent process.
The eight releases announced by Patiño are added to the release from the prisons of the ELN peace managers, members of that guerrilla who are part of his negotiating team, which include alias Violeta.
They also occur while the legal process promoted by the Government is advancing so that young people detained for alleged crimes committed during the social protests of 2019 and 2021 are released, no longer as members of the guerrilla, but with the new figure of spokespersons for peace.
The next round of talks between the Executive of Gustavo Petro and the last active guerrilla in the country will be held in Mexico, according to what sources in the process told EL PAÍS and confirmed by the guarantors at the close of the first cycle of talks.
After three weeks in Caracas, in which the parties have laid the foundations for talks between the State and the insurgency to find a solution to an armed conflict that has been going on for more than half a century.
Subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS newsletter on Colombia and receive all the latest information on the country.