RESPONSABILIDAD DEL SUPERIOR JERÁRQUICO Y RESPONSABILIDAD PENAL POR OMISIÓN DE MIEMBROS DE LA FUERZA PÚBLICA EN COLOMBIA: ¿CONVERGENCIA ENTRE EL DERECHO PENAL NACIONAL E INTERNACIONAL?

Since 4 September 2012, the official beginning of the peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), there has been much discussion about the possible application of the doctrine of command responsibility in the prosecution of international crimes by national courts. However, the scope of this doctrine, as developed in international criminal law, should be differentiated from the notion of criminal liability by omission under the Colombian Criminal Code (CCC). This paper explores the forms of criminal liability and the factual hypothesis that the doctrine of command responsibility covers. It also examines some decisions of the Colombian courts in which the notion of criminal liability by omission of armed force members is applied (especially with regard to the general provision contained in article 25 CCC), indicating some legal problems that have arisen in this regard. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the doctrine of command responsibility and the general provision of article 25 CCC, though closely related, are not the same. In doing so, it claims that Colombian courts should apply norms of the criminal code’s special part to cover some factual hypothesis which are not covered by article 25 CCC, but still fall within the scope of the doctrine of command responsibility as defined, for example, in the Rome Statute. Finally, it maintains that the confusion of these two regimes of criminal liability could lead us to transfer into the Colombian legal system some of the problems faced in the application of international criminal law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]