Duque guarantees gringo soldiers operations in Colombia
Oct 18, CI.- The court ruling that had been filed against President Iván Duque for not requesting authorization from the Senate or consulting the Council of State on the activities and presence of US troops in Colombia, was revoked by the Council of State leaving it without any effect.
The arrival of an elite military unit from the United States in June sparked a great political and legal controversy. According to President Duque, the mission of the Security Force Assistance Brigade -SFAB-, which includes 48 US military personnel, was to join forces with the national public force in the fight against drug trafficking.
However, different sectors of the citizenry and Congress opposed the mission, claiming that for a foreign military contingent to carry out operations in the national territory, it must first pass through the respective filters of the Congress of the Republic and other authorities. In this regard, the senators Iván Cepeda, Aída Avella, Antonio Sanguino, Gustavo Petro (along with 13 other congressmen) filed a tutelage before the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca to revoke the arrival of these soldiers. That Court ruled in favor of the aforementioned guardianship last July.
The ruling obliged Duque to suspend any activity of the foreign military brigade and in turn to support the entire informational siege regarding the “information and background related to the entry, arrival and permanence of the Security Force Assistance Brigade of the Army of The United States of America”.
Furthermore, it added that important constitutional procedures were omitted “in a matter as sensitive as the sovereignty of the State and not subjecting the presence of a foreign military brigade to political control is abrogating a non-existent competence for that authority (the President).”
Given this, the Presidency of the Republic presented an appeal that was answered on October 17 in favor of the Council of State. According to the Supreme Court document, “the plaintiffs didn’t prove that they exhausted before the Senate boards or through the channels provided for the protection of opposition rights the right to participation, whose request for protection was transferred to the guardianship judge ”.
Therefore, it was considered that in the face of the order given by the ruling there was a “wrong study” by the Court of Cundinamarca and it was finally revoked in the first instance and they declared the inadmissibility of the protection action for not meeting the requirement of subsidiarity.
The guardianship claimants are expected to resubmit a proposal that will continue the ruling.
