Above photo: Political prisoner Simón Trinidad. Campaign to Free Simón Trinidad.
Trinidad has been held for more than 20 years in a maximum security prison in Colorado.
Those who defend the peace process insist that his release is a key part of total peace in the country.
A few weeks ago, media reports revealed that the government of Gustavo Petro asked President Biden to pardon Simón Trinidad, a former Colombian guerrilla fighter who was sentenced to 60 years in prison in the United States after being captured in Ecuador in 2004 when he was on his way to meet with a United Nations delegate.
According to the Colombian Executive, Trinidad’s release would contribute to building a reconciled Colombia after decades of civil war. It was even known that the Colombian ambassador in Washington, Daniel García, sent a note to the US government requesting the pardon. For Rodrigo Londoño, former guerrilla and current leader of the Comunes Party, Trinidad’s repatriation could help the reparation of the victims of the armed conflict.
This is because, they argue, Trinidad has not been interrogated by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), an institution created from the Havana Agreements in 2016 for the clarification of the responsibilities of guerrillas, public forces and third parties who participated in the armed conflict. In this regard, the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Rojas, stated that Trinidad’s release is a humanitarian matter, inasmuch as the group to which he belonged already signed peace with the Colombian State. During the dialogue process between the FARC and the government of Juan Manuel Santos that led to the Havana Agreements, Trinidad’s release was a central issue.
According to Christian Arias, member of the International Relations Office of the Political and Social Coordination of Marcha Patriótica, “What the Colombian government is presenting to the United States is the request for clemency and pardon that President Biden can offer to favor the peace process, to favor the process of [clarification] of the truth about the facts of the [armed] conflict in Colombia.”
In this sense, Arias believes that Trinidad’s release “would undoubtedly help the peace process in Colombia. On the one hand, it would demonstrate that the Colombian State is capable of complying with the agreements and transmit a sign of confidence to the guerrilla organizations and other armed groups with which Petro’s government is dialoguing and negotiating at the same time…[It is] the guarantee for the government to advance in what it has called ‘Total Peace Policy’, a public policy of solution to these conflicts (a very ambitious policy), is the total compliance with the 2016 Peace Agreement.”
In addition, upon his return to Colombia, Arias continues, Trinidad will have to testify before the special peace tribunals, and explain what his participation in the events of the armed conflict truly was; in this way, Arias says, true reparations could be given to the victims of the armed conflict.
Who Is Simon Trinidad?
Simón Trinidad is the alias of Juvenal Ovidio Ricardo Palmera Pineda, a Colombian born in Valledupar, Department of Cesar, in 1950. From a wealthy family, Palmera studied economics in Bogota and, legend has it, completed a postgraduate degree at Harvard University.
He then worked for the government of the Department of Cesar as a financial advisor to the public institution called Caja Agraria while supervising work on his family’s farms. Shortly thereafter he dedicated himself to university teaching at the Universidad Popular del Cesar, where he taught Economic History of Colombia. While working there he was arrested in 1979 for five days, accused of being a guerrilla fighter and then quickly released.
In 1981, Palmera, together with Jaime Sierra, Tomás Agudelo and Federico Palacios, founded a Marxist-Lenin political group called “Los Independientes”, which in 1985 supported the Patriotic Union (UP), a leftist Colombian political movement that sought to transform Colombian society through electoral means. According to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, 5,195 of the UP’s militants and leaders were assassinated, constituting one of the most infamous political massacres in history.
At this time, Palmera, who was a militant of the UP, decided to abandon the legal path and join the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 1985. When there, he rose politically in a meteoric fashion after several military operations in less than ten years, and was then one of the main people responsible for the propaganda of the insurgent group. It was then that he assumed his nickname, Simón Trinidad, in honor of Simón Bolívar.
In 2000, he was the FARC spokesman in the peace talks of San Vicente del Caguán that this group held with the Colombian government of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002); it is then that his figure acquired national and international media relevance. In 2004, he was captured in Quito, Ecuador, by the local police.
In November 2004, the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice approved his extradition, although the then president himself, Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010), had to personally approve the extradition. As expected, the then Colombian President authorized his deportation on December 17 of the same year, although he stated that he could cancel the extradition if the FARC would release the prisoners under its control. The insurgent group rejected the proposal and Trinidad, who said he would use the opportunity to protest against the Uribe government, was deported on December 31, 2004.
What Crimes Is He Accused Of?
Trinidad faced two judicial processes in the United States. In the first, he was accused of participating in the kidnapping of three US citizens in Colombia, who were held for almost five years until their release in 2008 as part of Operation Jaque. The trial lasted four weeks and he was found guilty. The judge in charge of the case sentenced him to 60 years in prison. In the second trial, he was accused of being involved in drug trafficking activities, but the trial was unsuccessful because, according to Arias, Trinidad was able to demonstrate that the prosecutor’s arguments were not true.
Arias adds that Trinidad could not have been involved in the kidnapping of the three US citizens (who, according to Arias, “were three retired military officers who provided intelligence services through private companies”), because he was hundreds of kilometers away from the event and did not belong to the FARC front that carried out the kidnapping.
Trinidad is currently being held in the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado (also known as the “Alcatraz of the Rocky Mountains”), in a small cell with the lights always on, without access to reading or the ability to write. In a 2019 video, Trinidad explains that his stay in prison takes place in isolation that has lasted several years: “I am chained…I have chains on my feet, a belt on my leg with a battery of thousands of volts that, in the judgment of the jailers, can trigger the mechanism and produce a strong electrical charge in me. I have been in total isolation for more than five years, unable to converse with anyone because I do not speak the language. I have not even been allowed to study [English].”
In this regard, Arias comments that Trinidad is being detained “in inhumanly special conditions. He is in almost total isolation, [in a cell] underground and with a limited amount of sunlight per day. He has a restricted visiting regime, with the possibility of receiving correspondence only through his lawyers in the United States. In other words, he has permanent control over the relationships he can have with other people; not just anyone can visit him.”
So far there have been no favorable signs that the US government wants to release Trinidad, despite the efforts of the Colombian government for several years. According to Christian Arias, the refusal to release him has to do with “a way for the United States to teach a lesson to rebel and revolutionary groups…Many times, the national security advisors themselves have stated that they are not aware of the issue or that they do not see a release as possible.”
Nevertheless, the campaign for his release continues as a fundamental piece for a complete peace in Colombia. This is recognized by several political sectors in Colombia that aim to strengthen the 2016 peace accords, such as the American Coordinating Committee for the Rights of Peoples and Victims of Political Imprisonment, which has requested that the Biden administration grant Trinidad a pardon before the end of his term on January 20, 2025. An open letter signed by more than 300 individuals and human rights organizations asks that “the pertinent and necessary legal measures be taken to repatriate Ricardo Palmera to Colombia, as soon as possible, so that he can participate in the development of the Total Peace Plan. That until Palmera is repatriated to Colombia, he be allowed to participate in virtual sessions with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP).”