Colombia charges 10 ex-FARC members over Indigenous abuses

Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the tribunal created by the 2016 peace deal, has charged 10 former FARC members with war crimes and crimes against humanity against five Indigenous peoples in the country’s southeast, the tribunal announced Oct. 13, 2026.

The charges cover acts between 1996 and 2016. The five peoples, the Korebaju, Siona, Hitnu, Jiw and Nukak, total 10,073 people, according to the JEP data cited by Cambio, a Colombian news outlet. Three of the accused sat on the FARC’s last secretariat, its top command.

The tribunal’s recognition chamber took the decision on Oct. 12, Cambio reported. The three former secretariat members are Milton de Jesus Toncel (alias Joaquin Gomez), Jaime Alberto Parra and Julian Gallo, who served eight years as a senator under the peace deal, Al Jazeera reported in a story by its staff, AFP and The Associated Press.

The accused face allegations including murder, forced disappearance, forced displacement, torture and the laying of antipersonnel mines on Indigenous land. Most are charged as indirect co-perpetrators through organized power structures, Infobae reported, citing El Tiempo.

JEP magistrate Catalina Diaz said the tribunal was delivering justice to “the most forgotten peoples of a segregated Colombia,” Al Jazeera reported. She said FARC commanders ordered subordinates to plant landmines on Indigenous land and damage ecosystems the communities depended on.

Yhon Jairo Figueroa, a leader of the Koreguaje people, welcomed the decision as the first time the state recognized that armed groups aimed to destroy more than individuals. They “attempted to kill the knowledge, the language, the territory,” he said, according to Al Jazeera.

Among the incidents described by Infobae are the July 25, 1997, attack on the San Luis reserve in Caqueta department, in which 13 armed men killed seven men including the leader Reimundo Figueroa, and mines laid between 2012 and 2014 in Zio Bain Buenavista in Putumayo department. Cambio quoted the JEP as saying the group separated the community “following a list they carried in a notebook.”

The JEP also acknowledged that FARC units did not, in most cases, check the information they used before attacking, Cambio reported. It counted at least 1,134 victimizations attributable to the Bloque Sur and Bloque Oriental, but warned the figures “do not by themselves reflect the true dimension of the harm.”

Reports differ on how many people were charged. Al Jazeera and Cambio counted 10 and Cambio listed all 10 names. Infobae, citing El Tiempo, named nine. This article uses 10, the figure in the JEP data sheet as quoted by Cambio.

The accused have 30 business days to accept or contest the charges, Infobae reported. The JEP can impose only non-prison penalties. Last year it sentenced seven former FARC members, including Gallo, to eight years of reparative work, including landmine clearance and help finding missing people, for the group’s kidnappings, Al Jazeera said.

The case lands in a tense political moment. Al Jazeera reported that President Abelardo de la Espriella, inaugurated in August, has criticized the JEP for lenient sentences, and that his allies have proposed cutting its 2027 budget by nearly 17 per cent. Congress is due to consider the cut this month.

For Canadians, the link is mainly through travel and past aid. The Government of Canada’s Colombia travel advisory, updated Oct. 9, 2026, tells travellers to avoid all travel to Cauca and Caqueta except the cities of Popayan and Florencia, and to avoid non-essential travel to Putumayo, citing kidnapping and violence by illegal armed groups.

Ottawa also backed the peace process. On Sept. 26, 2016, then foreign affairs minister Stephane Dion announced $21 million for peace implementation, including transitional justice, landmine clearance and the reintegration of former combatants. No Canadian government comment on the new charges was found.

The next marker is the 30-business-day response period for the accused. Congress is due to consider the proposed JEP budget cut this month.

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Via Al Jazeera (AFP and The Associated Press), Cambio and Infobae (citing El Tiempo). Canada News Media did not read the JEP’s own resolution.