Colombian army murdered 6402 civilians | I…

The Colombian justice mechanism, which investigates crimes committed in the conflict between the state and armed groups, brought to 6,402 the number of civilians killed by the military and presented as combatants between 2002 and 2008. The so-called “false positive “, which constitute one of the darkest chapters of the internal conflict that Colombia has dragged on since the 1960s, they involve around 1,500 soldiers. The work of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) shows that the number of victims is three times what we thought and what during Álvaro Uribe’s presidency accounted for 78 percent of the total of those deaths.

Although the military high command has always denied that this was a systematic practice, some officers and soldiers have already confessed to their participation in the crimes. Anyway, the tribunal de paix has not yet handed down any convictions since its entry into force in 2018. << We hope that this exercise will identify the main culprits, that is to say to those who devised the strategy and ordered the military units to implement it in a systematic and atrocious manner ”, he declared. Page 12 Luis Alfonso Castillo, spokesperson for the National Movement for Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE).

Case 03 is titled “Deaths Unlawfully Presented as Combat Victims by State Agents”. When you start to investigate this land, the JEP received a report from the Attorney General’s office which estimated false positives at 2,248. However, this special justice mechanism now recognizes that extrajudicial killings are tripling that number.

“The JEP establishes that at least 6,402 people were killed to be presented as combat victims throughout the national territory between 2002 and 2008”The Chamber for the recognition of the truth and the responsibility of the tribunal responsible for investigating the case raised this Thursday: “The big difference between the figures provided by the government and the conclusions of the JEP continues to be worrying”, a he declared. Castillo. “However, extrajudicial killings were part of a policy taught by Colombian military forces across the country “added the spokesperson for MOVICE.

False positives dot around 1,500 soldiers who deceived civilians to assassinate them and present better results to their superiors amid fierce combat with the guerrillas. That way, they got permits, prizes, and other benefits. The victims of this macabre machinery were initially residents of rural areas in 29 of the country’s 32 departments, although later the phenomenon recurred in urban areas, people living on the streets, informal workers and even the disabled. .

Among the more than 220 JEP proceedings in this case, retired General Mario Montoya Uribe, former army commander and retired General Paulino Coronado, as well as 51 soldiers, 38 non-commissioned officers, 32 non-commissioned officers , 10 officers with the rank of major and 7 with the rank of colonel. Thanks to these diligences the tribunal de paix was able to recover the bodies of 71 people who were presented as combat victims by state agents in the department of Antioquia.

On February 17, 2020, the JEP handed over to relatives the body of Edison Lezcano Hurtado, a 23-year-old farmer and father, the first to be identified among the remains exhumed at Las Mercedes cemetery in Dabeiba, Antioquia. In addition, on 10 November, the remains of four other victims of the armed conflict, including two minors, were handed over by the JEP to their families.

After the new number of false positives provided by the Colombian justice system, the attribution of charges and responsibilities will be initiated by the middle managers, that is to say by those who committed these crimes. Then they will go to the army high command, which ordered the extrajudicial executions. Alejandro Restrepo, coordinator of the research area of ​​the Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, hopes that the JEP “can move forward in clarifying judicial accountability” despite the fact that the tribunal de paix “has a very difficult battle to wage against the sectors which are in government today and which have waged a direct war against the judicial processes”.