About the Project - The National Security Archive's Colombia Project seeks to identify and obtain the release of documents from secret government archives on United States policy in Colombia and to disseminate these records through publications, conferences and the Archive's web site. Major themes of the project include security assistance, human rights, impunity and counternarcotics programs.

New
Trujillo Declassified
Documenting Colombia's 'tragedy without end'

Documents Detail U.S. Concerns about Impunity in Major Human Rights Case

"Justice, Reparation, Memory, Truth": Stones at the entrance to the memorial for the victims of the Trujillo massacre. (Michael Evans)

Washington D.C., October 5, 2008 - As Colombian prosecutors begin to reopen investigations against individuals connected to one of the worst massacres in the country’s modern history, the National Security Archive today publishes on the Web a collection of declassified documents detailing U.S. concerns about the wall of impunity that has long surrounded the case. These documents are central to an article published this weekend in Spanish on the Web site of Semana magazine, Colombia’s largest newsweekly. An English version of the article is available on the Archive Web site and on the Web site of the new Semana International.

The new movement on the Trujillo massacre follows closely the release of a major new report on the case, the first issued by the Historical Memory Group (GMH) of the National Commission on Reparations and Reconciliation (CNRR). Led by a distinguished group of researchers, the GMH is charged with writing a comprehensive history of the Colombian conflict focusing on the country’s illegal armed groups.

The Archive’s Colombia Documentation Project is proud to be assisting the GMH and other researchers with investigations of the major human rights cases over the last four decades of violence in Colombia.

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