Rito Alejo del Río Rojas had more mentions in court files than decorations in the Colombian army. The retired general, who commanded the XVII Brigade, the highest military authority in Urabá Antioquia, was charged this week by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) with seven crimes committed against members of the left-wing Patriotic Union party and against communities in Urabá, including homicide of a protected person, genocide and forced displacement. Del Río, one of the most publicly exposed officers and a former political ally of right-wing former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, is once again at the center of investigations by authorities charged with investigating crimes committed in Colombia’s armed conflict.
The 81-year-old officer, known as “the peacemaker of Urabá”, must answer before the JEP for crimes committed by military and paramilitary groups when he commanded this region, between 1995 and 1998. It is a shadow that has accompanied him since then, when his second in command, Colonel Carlos Alfonso Velásquez, denounced him. Three decades later, the court attributes Del Río as one of the main perpetrators of the genocide against members of the Patriotic Union (UP), which, between murders, forced disappearances and other serious violations, left at least 5,729 dead and some 3,200 additional victims of events such as displacement, threats, torture, arbitrary detentions, sexual violence and exile.
This is not the first time that the name of this boyacense appears in court files on cases committed in the midst of armed conflict. In 2012, the criminal justice system sentenced him to 26 years in prison for the murder of farmer Marino López Mena, which occurred in 1997 when members of the brigade murdered him under his orders. He was also summoned by the courts in the case of the assassination of journalist Jaime Garzón (1999), after several former paramilitaries, such as the ringleader alias Don Berna, implicated him in an alliance that allegedly committed the crime. And it was mentioned in an investigation into the assassinations of civilians known as false positives: in 1986, when he commanded the Rafael Reyes battalion in Cimitarra (Santander), several soldiers said he had allowed practices that resulted in the assassinations of civilians presented as victims of the fighting.
In addition, he was investigated for the Mapiripán massacre, one of the most atrocious of the conflict, carried out by paramilitaries in Meta, in 1997. Although it occurred hundreds of kilometers from his brigade in Urabá, the murderers came from there and two planes carrying paramilitaries left for San José del Guaviare a few days before the armed incursion that led to the assassinations. The file was reopened years later to clarify the level of responsibility he could have had in this operation.
With all these burdens, convicted Del Río knocked on the doors of the JEP in 2017 to access parole, in exchange for his promise to reveal the truth and reparate his victims. His testimony would be a key element in assessing the extent of state involvement in the conflict, but he provided little information. So little that in May 2024, Judge Gustavo Salazar revoked his freedom and ordered his return as a prisoner to a military garrison. “He evades his responsibility regarding knowledge of the permanent and continuous presence of paramilitary groups in the region and intends through his statements to deny that the paramilitary presence on the territory of the 11th and 17th Brigades, at the very least, was large, public, notorious, massive, fixed, in uniform and in connivance with multiple members of the institutions,” we read in a court document. This is the same conduct of Del Río in the process in which the JEP is investigating the coordination between military units and paramilitary structures: despite repeated calls from the court and victims, Del Río denies these criminal alliances contrary to the evidence.
The estate in Urabá and the first questions
From his humble origins in Boyacá and his entry into the army in 1967, Rito Alejo Del Río rose through the ranks of the Colombian military structure to become one of the most influential officers of his time. In December 1995, when he took command of the XVII Brigade, based in Carepa, Urabá was marked by the presence of guerrillas and paramilitaries, with a civilian population stuck in the middle of the conflict. His appointment was presented by some as an opportunity to restore order to a historically conflictual area.
During his years in Urabá, he was the subject of international issues. The Colombian Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights included the XVII Brigade in several of its reports from the late 1990s, highlighting patterns of tolerance or collusion with paramilitary groups. At the same time, Human Rights Watch described the expansion of the paramilitaries in Urabá and repeatedly mentioned the role of the brigade under its command. In addition, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has received petitions related to human rights violations in this region, alluding to control failures and possible omissions on the part of the military command.
His career in the military forces ended in 1998. President Andrés Pastrana ordered his departure from the army after international allegations of paramilitary expansion in Urabá, the same accusations that forced him to account to the JEP. The decision generated strong tensions with the commander of the military forces at the time, General Harold Bedoya, who refused to remove him and publicly defended Del Río. The fight ended with the departure of the two officers, in one of the most tense episodes in relations between civil and military power in years.
Del Río went from one of the most influential territorial officers to a figure shrouded in suspicion, frequently mentioned in disciplinary and criminal investigations into human rights violations. However, his retirement did not prevent scrutiny or his public appearances: new reports from international organizations and new statements from former paramilitaries such as Salvatore Mancuso continued to appear.
His proximity to former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez was one of the most visible traits of this stage. In 2002, when the former governor of Antioquia won the presidency, the retired general participated in events in support of the democratic security policy and his offensive against the guerrillas. In 2004, when he faced one of his first arrests for alleged links to paramilitaries, in a process that was later archived, several of Uribe’s deputies came to his defense. And in 2012, after his conviction for the murder of Marino López, Uribe himself publicly presented the conviction as an act of “injustice” against those who had fought the insurrection.
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