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LATIN AMERICA |
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Eleven Colombian Soldiers Arrested for
Unlawful Killings
BOGOTA – Agents with Colombia’s Attorney
General’s Office have arrested 11
active-duty military members for allegedly
killing five peasants in late 2006 and later
presenting them as guerrillas slain in
combat.
Local media said the arrests of the troops,
which included officers and NCOs, occurred
at the headquarters of the Rook Battalion in
Ibague, the capital of the central-western
province of Tolima.
A prosecutor with the AG office’s human
rights unit is investigating them for their
presumed role in killings that occurred in
December 2006 in El Totumo, a hamlet located
between the cities of Ibague and Rovira.
The scandal of “false positives” – civilians
executed by the army and then presented as
rebels killed in combat – erupted last
October with the discovery in northeastern
Colombia of the bodies of a score of young
men who had disappeared from Soacha, a poor
town on the outskirts of Bogota.
The men had been buried in common graves as
if they were guerrillas killed in combat.
It emerged that civilian accomplices lured
the victims away from Soacha with promises
of employment and that the soldiers who
claimed credit for the “kills” received
weekend passes and other benefits.
Other false positives are the result of
“social cleansing,” while yet another class
of victims consisted of people slain or
kidnapped by rightist militias and handed
over to the army, according to an official
report handed over to the United Nations
special rapporteur for extrajudicial
executions, Philip Alston, when he visited
the Andean nation in June.
The Colombian government responded by
sacking more than 50 military officers,
including three generals, but it has also
claimed that guerrilla sympathizers are
making false accusations to make the scandal
seem worse than it is and to undermine
efforts by President Alvaro Uribe’s
hard-line administration to win the fight
against leftist rebels.
Dozens of soldiers have been convicted in
connection with unlawful killings and
hundreds of cases remain under
investigation.
A recent study by the Center for Research
and Popular Education, or Cinep, found that
“between 2001 and 2009 there were 465
‘‘false positives cases, with 940 victims.”
On many occasions, investigators have
confirmed, peasants, young laborers and in
some cases even handicapped individuals were
presented as rebels or paramilitary fighters
killed in combat.
Colombia’s military, which receives roughly
$500 million a year in U.S. assistance, is
under pressure to show results in its
campaign against the 45-year-old FARC
guerrilla insurgency and it is said that
unit commanders have quotas for the number
of rebels eliminated.
U.N. rapporteur Alston said that what he
learned during his 10-day visit to Colombia
left no doubt in his mind the extrajudicial
killing of civilians was a “systematic
practice” for the country’s armed forces.
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