CCPR/C/114/D/2134/2012
are submitting the communication in their own name, on behalf of their disappeared
relatives, Julio Eduardo Molina Arias and Guillermo Anzola Grajales, and on beh alf of
the deceased daughter of Luz Elena Usuga Usuga and Guillermo Anzola Grajales,
Karol Juliana Anzola Usuga. They claim that their disappeared relatives ’ rights under
articles 2 (para. 3), 6 (para. 1), 7, 9, 10, 16, 17 and 23 (para. 1) of the Internati onal
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have been violated. Regarding themselves and
Karol Juliana Anzola Usuga, they claim that they are victims of violations of articles 2
(para. 3), 7, 17 and 23 of the Covenant. The authors are represented by Federi co
Andreu Guzmán and Camilo Eduardo Umaña Hernández of the Colombian
Commission of Jurists.
The facts as presented by the authors
2.1 The authors and their disappeared relatives were residents of Medellín
(department of Antioquia). On 7 March 1995, Guillermo Anzola Grajales asked Julio
Eduardo Molina Arias to accompany him by car to Puerto Triunfo, a municipality in
Antioquia in the region known as Middle Magdalena, where Mr. Anzola had to go to
see a notary following the death of his father. On 8 March, they arrived in Puerto
Triunfo, where Mr. Anzola conducted his business at the notary’s office, and they
informed their relatives that they would stay at the house of Mr. Anzola ’s deceased
father and set out on the return journey the following day. On 9 March, Mr. Molina
called his wife to tell her that he would be back that afternoon. In the absence of any
subsequent contact, their relatives called the house of Mr. Anzola ’s deceased father.
The domestic worker who answered told them that Mr. Anzola and M r. Molina had left
at 7 a.m. The relatives checked whether there had been any road traffic accidents and
went to hospitals and the morgue, but were unable to establish the whereabouts of Mr.
Anzola and Mr. Molina.
2.2 On 10 March 1995, Luz Elena Usuga Usuga and Rosa María Serna, the wives of
Mr. Anzola and Mr. Molina, respectively, travelled to Puerto Triunfo. On 11 March,
Ms. Usuga reported Mr. Anzola and Mr. Molina missing to the police in Doradal,
Puerto Perales and Puerto Boyacá, which are all municipalities in the Middle
Magdalena region. On 18 March, she lodged a criminal complaint with the Puerto
Triunfo public prosecutor ’s office, which opened preliminary investigation case No.
560. On 25 October 1996, however, the office decided to shelve the case b ecause it
“could not find sufficient grounds to initiate a criminal investigation, as it had been
unable to identify the perpetrators of the act”.
2.3 The authors point out that, despite all the complaints submitted, the only
information that they received regarding the fate of their disappeared relatives came
from a friend of Mr. Anzola’s uncle, who claimed that, on 16 June 1995, he had seen
Mr. Anzola and Mr. Molina leaving a bank in Bucaramanga (department of Santander)
in the company of armed men who put them in a car.
2.4 The authors allege that while Ms. Usuga and Ms. Serna were making inquiries in
the Middle Magdalena region, they were told by a police officer, who was unwilling to
give his name, that “in that area, paramilitary groups were stopping people to check
their identity and were disappearing persons from outside the region ”. The officer told
them that the police could do nothing about it because “they did not have control in
that area”, adding, by way of warning, that they should stop looking as “all people
from outside the area who arrived there were checked by them [the paramilitary
groups] and subsequently disappeared”. Upon hearing this, Ms. Usuga and Ms. Serna
decided to leave Puerto Triunfo for fear of being disappeared. On the journey back,
they were pursued by a van carrying six men. Taking advantage of a traffic jam on the
motorway, three men got out of the van and ordered the driver of the car in which Ms.
Usuga and Ms. Serna were travelling to turn off the motorway. The driver did not
GE.15-15601
3/20