Former Colombian leader sentenced to 40 years

A court in Colombia has sentenced Salvatore Mancuso, a notorious former paramilitary leader, to 40 years in prison for atrocities against indigenous communities in the northeastern province of La Guajira. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for serious crimes including murder, enforced disappearance and displacement between 2002 and 2006, The Guardian reported.
The special tribunal set up to try the country’s armed conflict found Mancuso directly responsible for 117 crimes committed by fighters under his command in La Guajira. However, the court said that Mancuso’s sentence could be reduced to eight years if he actively cooperated in the investigation of the truth and in the compensation and rehabilitation of victims.
Salvatore Mancuso, 61, was one of the top commanders of Colombia’s far-right paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces (AUC), in the late 1990s. The group established a reign of terror by colluding with drug traffickers and some of the country’s business and military-political elites to suppress leftist rebels. Although their primary goal was to suppress the rebels, the AUC is accused of killing hundreds of innocent villagers and indigenous people. According to a 2022 Truth Commission report, 450,000 people died in Colombia’s internal armed conflict between 1985 and 2018.