Proposed Bill to Strengthen Identification of Disappeared Persons Sparks Concern among Experts

2023-06-19 03:45:00

A setback was received by the Superior Criminal Policy Council (CSPC), the State’s advisory body on this matter, a bill that seeks to modify the Institute of Legal Medicine to strengthen the identification of persons disappeared in the armed conflict.

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The initiative, which has 45 articles and was presented by government-affiliated congressmen, seeks for Legal Medicine to leave the Prosecutor’s Office, to be renamed the National Scientific Technical Institute of Forensic Sciences, and to be an organ of the judicial branch endowed with legal personality, with administrative and patrimonial autonomy.

According to the proposal, the new National Technical Scientific Institute of Forensic Sciences would become the independent institution in Colombia that concentrates technical, scientific, and expert forensic functions, and is in charge of the registration, preservation, and custody of unidentified and identified bodies not delivered. to their relatives.

In Legal Medicine (downtown Bogotá), the panorama is of relatives waiting for their deceased. However, in 2015, 1.7% of those killed violently were not claimed.

Photo:

Juan Diego Buitrago / EL TIEMPO

However, the CSPC warned in one concept that a project of this nature “could fundamentally impact the possibilities of the State to investigate and prosecute those who commit punishable conducts”, since it not only proposes to modify the structure of the judicial branch but also that changes one of the technical bodies that are essential for the functioning of the criminal process.

A project of this nature can fundamentally impact the possibilities of the State to investigate and prosecute those who commit punishable conduct: CSPC

Faced with turning Legal Medicine into an entity that concentrates the country’s technical, scientific and expert forensic functions, the concept says that currently the Institute does not have a presence in all the municipalities of Colombia and could not administer the laboratories of the Police or the Prosecutor’s Office .

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For example, today, says the concept, the Police has a presence in 58 Sections and in 249 Basic Units, while Legal Medicine has officers only in 25 Sections and in 113 Basic Units.

“This reveals that the possibility of the Institute assuming all the functions of Legal Medicine in Colombia would require such a large budget expenditure that it would completely compromise the fiscal viability of the Bill, while a contract would have to be made to operate all the laboratories in places where the Institute does not have a presence and train these people to manage some functions that the National Police has been carrying out efficiently for years,” it reads.

Likewise, the CSPC considered that handing over to Legal Medicine all the laboratories of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Police, which they have been using not only for forensic matters but for other investigative powers that go beyond the scope of Legal Medicine, such as computer investigations, “not only would not affect their patrimony, but would decrease their ability to carry out their duties efficiently”.

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The CSPC does not endorse the proposal that Legal Medicine assume the dactyloscopic identification of those captured, since it could affect the times for a capture to be legal. (File photo)

Photo:

Jaiver Nieto / EL TIEMPO

Another concern was that one of the great capacities of the Judicial Police is to carry out urgent acts such as the fingerprint identification of the captured, “to completely transfer this function to Forensic Medicine could jeopardize the timeline that must be followed to that a capture be legal, since it would make the Prosecutor’s Office depend on an autonomous institution to carry out a step without which the captured person cannot be presented before a judge,” the document states.

In the same sense, he said that due to the nature of the work of the Police, its officials are available every day and every hour, unlike Legal Medicine, which only has 24-hour attention in cities like Bogotá, “which can also affect the victims’ access to the administration of justice if all the tasks are concentrated in this entity”.

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Finally, it is questioned that the “independence of the National Institute of Legal Medicine would affect the coordinated capacity of the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation to investigate, since it would have to go to an autonomous entity to request the performance of investigative acts, which, by their nature, They must be carried out within or with the coordination of the Prosecutor’s Office.”

For all of the above, the Higher Council for Criminal Policy issued an unfavorable opinion of the initiative, considering that it “endangers the effectiveness of criminal justice and the investigative capacities of the Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police.”

Worrying panorama of homicides in ColombiaAccording to legal medicine, 47.7% of deaths in the country correspond to murders.

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