An administrative tribunal in Cundinamarca temporarily suspends the activities of the U.S. Security Force Assistance Battalion, which had been on a high-profile advisory and training mission in Colombia since early June. The court finds in favor of 25 Colombian senators who argued that the Constitution requires that they autorize such deployments. The suspension is temporary while the Duque government turns information about the deployment over to the Congress.
Timeline for entries tagged “Defense Ministry”
A chronology of events related to peace, security, and human rights in Colombia.
June 12, 2020
June 10, 2020
Colombia’s Senate holds a debate over the presence in the country of a 53-person U.S. training brigade (Security Force Assistance Brigade, or SFAB). The debate is called by opposition senators, who allege that the deployment violates Colombia’s constitution, which requires Senate approval for the transit of troops through national territory. Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo, in an hourlong statement, insists that the U.S. personnel are not “transiting through” on their four-month deployment, but are collaborating to fight narcotrafficking. Ruling-party Senator and former president Álvaro Uribe leads the bloc of senators defending the U.S. troop deployment. Opposition legislators voice strong concern that the U.S. deployment could be a step toward Colombian involvement in a conflict with Venezuela.
June 3, 2020
As fallout continues over a scandal involving military intelligence abuses, Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo announces new measures: the creation of new inspectors to supervise military intelligence and counter-intelligence units, new standards for personnel entering intelligence units; and stronger mechanisms for receiving complaints of wrongdoing.
April 16, 2020
Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo says that the government is forging ahead in the fulfillment of Constitutional Court-mandated requirements for the re-starting of aerial herbicide fumigation in coca-growing zones.
February 3, 2020
- Colombian Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo pays a visit to the United States. He visits the U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force-North in Key West, Florida, which monitors suspicious aerial and maritime trafficking. He meets with top officials at Southern Command headquarters in Doral, Miami. And he travels to Washington for a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
January 27, 2020
- Truth Commission President Francisco De Roux says that the Defense Ministry has gone a year without honoring requests for classified files necessary for the elaboration of the Commission’s report. De Roux says he has spent more than a month seeking a meeting with Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo, whose order could probably produce the needed files.