Colombia: army accused of more than 6,400 extra-judicial executions
Colombian soldiers surround Farc rebels after their surrender in September 2012 (illustrative image).
AP - Luis Benavides
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At least 6,402 civilians were executed in Colombia by soldiers and presented as killed in action between 2002 and 2008, a figure three times higher than that estimated so far, announced this Thursday the Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP) .
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The Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP) investigated this scandal, in which the police are involved, and established that “
at least 6,402 Colombians have died and have been illegitimately presented as fallen in combat between 2002 and 2008
”, she said in a press release.
The revelation of this practice, referred to in military slang as “false positives”, was one of the biggest scandals involving the Colombian armed forces in the nearly six decades of confrontation with leftist guerrillas.
Although the general staff has always denied that this was a systematic practice, soldiers and officers declared in
the peace court that
they carried out these executions to inflate their results under pressure from their superiors.
Civilians shot in cold blood
The soldiers kept track of the guerrillas and narco-paramilitaries killed in the clashes, and these "positive" results were rewarded with medals, permissions and promotions.
But thousands of dead were actually civilians shot in cold blood.
Until last year, the public prosecutor's office had recorded 2,249 extra-judicial executions committed between 1988 and 2014, 59% of which between 2006 and 2008, under the government of
the hard-right ex-president Alvaro Uribe
(2002- 2010).
According to the JEP, the majority of the "false positives" were killed in the department of Antioquia (north-west), where the army and far-right paramilitary militias were fighting the rebels.
"
The Fourth Brigade, which controlled this area, could be responsible for 73% of the deaths listed in the department between the years 2000 and 2013,
" said the court.
(
With
AFP)
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