“Pacho Santos se reunió con Carlos Castaño y conmigo”: Salvatore Mancuso

0:01 You have also insistently mentioned the participation of former Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón in the start- up or suggestion for the start- up of the capital block of self- defense. He has denied it for years and it is a process that justice has not yet resolved. What tells us about that, which meetings you personally had with Pacho Santos, and that' s what we talked about. My pachito was a person who led to self- defense. Let us remember the historical context for that moment in order to understand it. The first time the capital city, Bogotá was practically besieged by the guerrillas, it was impossible to leave outside the leaks of Bogotá and at that moment the powerful people who come in this great city felt the rigor of the real threat that the guerrillas represented at that time asked us to self- defense. Panchito went and met with Commander Carlos Castaño, with me to create a block of self - defenses up to the name. Capital was proposed to prevent the guerrillas from keeping them practically under siege as they were at the time and from taking over this capital city. We prevented the guerrillas from taking power by arms definitively in

1:34 the war, but we all lost in a terrible situation that cannot continue to be repeated. Pachito Santos was then in the United States as ambassador and in my particular case, for example, when the United States asks me if I have a different citizenship and if I would go to a different country, I said look yes, right now I am in post- transitional justice and peace. I have the right to the truth, to freedom. They have not fulfilled me and I have fears that without fulfillment it will be to take me to a prison in Colombia and inside that prison to allow me to be murdered.

2:15 Then I' d rather go to Italy. The United States issues a final removal order. This is called the final removal order and designates Italy as the country of removal. Everything was ready. They had three months to send me to Italy. It was four months after three months passed. They cannot reverse that final order of removal and Ambassador Pachito Santos at that time pact with President Trump' s government that the final order of removal of mancurrencies from Italy to Colombia should be changed and agreed that Colombia would deliver the vote and help with the lob for the election of the president of the BEAT, of the Introamerican Development Bank, which has traditionally been Latin American, and appoint an American director. There was enormous political pressure in that management, and yet, despite all those things, I believed what then forced me to embrace the international protection of the United Nations against torture and was in that process. I was going to go there or I was going to Italy, I was going to stay in Colombia. I even told the Government that, to the extent that they gave me the necessary guarantees, if they sent me to Italy, I would

3:45 go back to Colombia and I did so Note that even with all these situations, when the President appoints me peace manager. I decide to honor that appointment and decide to honor my moral commitment to the victims and I have returned. I have returned to work for peace, for reconciliation. I want to do this, but it is also important that I am aware that we have complied with it. We have to comply. Transitional justice has to fulfill and both have the power to give me freedom because I have fulfilled. I do not owe you a single day and both have the possibility to lift the measures of assurance on this issue particularly in all these years, you have received the request to change your version on the subject of Francisco Santos and the conformation of the capital block of the self- defenses. Someone has brought you a reason or has spontaneously told you why you are reconsidering these statements. Look all these years and when I was in Itawi, sometimes they would come in on weekends, visiting days, people who you didn' t know and who were supposed to visit other inmates and they would come and see me walking around they would come to the cell and they would come and say they would send you to say please don' t talk about one, don' t talk about the other.

5:09 And at some point they told me not to talk about those issues, that it was not convenient for the Government, for the country, for my family, for me, that is, they were clear threats. But I ' ve always followed who' s engaged. I' ve never been a person to be changing versions. What I' m saying is the truth and that' s it. Who was the emissary of those threats. Many justice knows who they are. To them I have told them who they have been.