International Trade committee  The Justice and Peace Law offered transitional justice under which five to eight-year sentences were provided for those accepting to give testimony and to confess to the exactions committed by them. Such persons, if prosecuted under the Colombian justice system, risk 40, 50 or 60-year jail sentences.

International Trade committee  In an interview given on August 20, 2003, the vice-president answers your question by saying that there are many enemies of unionization. Union leaders are mainly the victims of the paramilitary, but there is also the FARC and the national liberation army. There are also business people and company presidents who do not want to see their workers organized under unions and who give out contracts to have these people eliminated.

International Trade committee  May I add to the point that a substantial number of judges were named in order to deal with an increasing number of cases. According to the new law, the Justice and Peace Law of 2005, they created two tribunals of exception in Barranquilla and Bogota in order to deal with the possible demobilization of the paramilitaries.