Colombia: Open letter to Judge María Stella Jara Gutiérrez –

Colombia: Open letter to Judge María Stella Jara Gutiérrez – by Thania Vega de Plazas

Your Honor,

In the solitude of my nights, to which I was sentenced three years ago when my husband, Colonel Luis Alfonso Plazas Vega, was arrested, I reflect on what is happening. Twenty-three years after the painful events at the Palace of Justice, my husband was arrested, first to investigate him and then to try him. He was deprived of his freedom because a judge decided he was “dangerous to society.” During those years I have had to learn to live alone, since my sons left the country six years ago because of the threats they received.

I have spent many sad nights, many bitter nights, many fearful nights. This night is special. There are so many ideas and questions that are running through my mind that I have decided to get up to write and try to put my feelings in order. Today I learned from the media that you left the country after sentencing Colonel Plazas Vega to life imprisonment, because 30 years in prison for a man who turned 66 yesterday is life imprisonment.

That makes me think of the immense responsibility it is to be a judge. Being a judge means almost being God. No wonder they call you “Your Honor.” Our life was, and is, in the hands of a judge. Mine, my husband’s, my sons. You have destroyed that life, those lives, without reason: my husband’s, mine, my son’s and my grandson’s, and the lives of the grandchildren to come, and the lives of everyone in our family. What a tremendous responsibility. It’s almost supernatural. Controlling and defining the life of a human being and deciding to lock him up in a cell for the rest of his life, punishing him in this way because he “allegedly” committed a crime, is taking divine justice into one’s own hands here on Earth!

How well-rounded, how centered, how upright, how honest, how even-handed, how impartial, how prepared, how balanced, how brave one must be to be a good judge. Do you have those virtues? I’m sure you don’t. I don’t think you have any of those virtues. If you did, you would never have issued that sentence, or convicted an innocent man, an honest, Christian man, servant of the Nation, good Colombian, with an impeccable resume. You did not gather a single piece of evidence against him. You relied on the testimony of a ghost witness, who neither you nor the defense saw or could question in person, because he never appeared in court, and whose testimony is four pages full of lies in which not even his signature is genuine. Your Honor, you convicted a defendant without material evidence. That is indeed a demonstrable and abominable crime, and a sin besides.

How I would love to sit with you, your honor, face to face, to look into your eyes and try to see what is inside you.

What are you running from, Your Honor? The media says you’ve fled from threats that came from this case. If you have any doubt, I want to tell you one thing: Neither the colonel nor his family were the ones who threatened you.

My sons live abroad, and they were raised right. They come from a Christian home, and their values make us proud. Colonel Plazas has been undergoing medical treatment at the Military Hospital in Bogotá for ten months because of the emotional harm that you caused him with your brutal, intransigent posture, through your decision to deny him the opportunity to be with his father when he passed away. And then by having him removed from the hospital and taking him with hands and feet tied, like a criminal of the worst kind, to a jail in which he did not belong — according to the Constitution and the law, which you do not follow. You, this entire time, ordered him to be guarded by the INPEC Immediate Reaction Group, an extraordinary level of guarding that was not applied to real criminals like “alias la pantera” or “alias Pablito,” nor to any hired killer, nor to any guerrilla.

I am a woman alone. I do not know how to make threats. Those kinds of actions go against my education, my upbringing. As a mother and wife, I have suffered the psychological torture that threats cause. We were threatened over several years when Colonel Alfonso Plazas confronted drug trafficking in this country when he was head of the Colombian National Antinarcotics Office during the first administration of President Alvaro Uribe Velez. It would never occur to us to do the same to someone else.

I believe that you were in fact threatened by others, not by Colonel Plazas. And that fear pressured you to act, to deliver the ruling you did. I believe you are not running away from these threats. You are running from the fears that come from the fact of having committed a serious crime, which convicting an innocent man is. I presume that is what has caused the delay of more than eight months in you issuing your unjust guilty ruling, while you arranged how to fulfill a secret, abominable pact, and how to guard against the moral and legal consequences of ruling without evidence and sending an innocent man to prison, for life.

You are running from your own conscience. Running from that is very difficult. You can go to the most remote place on the planet, but the shadow of your guilt will always follow you.

The truth is that we are suffering immensely, and you have destroyed our hopes, but we have inner peace. We have faith that when this case reaches the hands of an honest, impartial judge, with the virtues that I mentioned, justice will prevail. I do not know what country in the world you are in now. What I do know is that you cannot be at peace. Your irresponsibility and your cruelty have been immense, and so I know you will not find peace or tranquility anywhere.

I advise you to be brave and unburden your conscience, telling who threatened you to such an extent that you could not act as a true judge of the Republic of Colombia. I am not a person of hate or resentment. I ask God to save me from those feelings. I am sincere when I say that I feel a certain sorriness and a certain sympathy for the enormous weight that you yourself have decided to burden your conscience with. In an interview you gave to the Colombian newspaper “El Espectador”, you said you had to seek psychiatric help and take drops. I know why Colonel Plazas had emotional problems. I’ve already explained that. I would like to know what torments you so.

During the trial I prayed for you, for God to enter into your soul and help you to act under the Law and for Justice, and to not be cowed by the malefic interests threatening you. I see, however, that in this case, so far, Evil has defeated Good. But it’s never too late, Your Honor. Unburden your conscience to regain your inner peace. Do it for fear of God. I always wondered why, in the proceedings I attended, I could never make eye contact with you. You never looked me in the eye. Now I understand. You were already compromised, and your internal struggle would not let you look me in the eye.

Right now you may be in Germany, supported by some NGOs and politically-left organizations. Meanwhile, Colonel Plazas has been deprived of his freedom here, fighting with his defense team to prove his innocence, because with justice in Colombia, despite what the Constitution, the laws and court precedents say, military personnel do not have to be proven guilty, but rather they have to prove their innocence.

But Colonel Plazas is also supported by hundreds of thousands of citizens, of different levels, by common people, by good Colombians. And even by people from other countries who have expressed their support and solidarity. I have absolute certainty that, inwardly, you are not well. You never will be while your victim, Colonel Plazas Vega, is deprived of his freedom. I think, your honor, that you have ruined your own life. You can flee from Colombia, but you cannot flee from your own guilt. Here, although we do not have freedom, we have inner peace, despite the outrage that we are victims. God is with us.