Colombia to Investigate
Extrajudicial Executions
BOGOTA - The Colombian General Attorney's
Office (FGC) ordered to investigate more
than 400 extrajudicial executions by
paramilitaries from 1998 to 2006, media
outlets reported on Thursday.
Members of the Northern Bloc of the
so-called United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia (AUC) have confessed 120
assassinations or false positives in which
military men and police agents would be
involved.
According to FGC experts, those cases are
only part of revelations reported by members
of those armed groups that have been
captured or demobilized in the last five
years.
Members of 18 paramilitary squads throughout
the country asserted that most of these
crimes were arranged with police officers.
General Attorney's Office Peace and Justice
Unit spokespeople asserted that AUC members,
grouped in regional gangs, as Libertadores
del Sur, Centauros, Resistencia Tayrona and
Heroes de Granada, have confessed 424
extrajudicial executions so far.
Minors and even members of the AUC, reported
as non-existent combat casualties, are among
the victims, according to El Tiempo daily.
On the basis of this information, the FGC
requested that the government passed those
trials to the ordinary justice, under
supervision by the Human Rights Unit and the
Colombian Attorney General's Office.
High-profiled convict Daniel Rendon,
involved in paramilitarism and drug
trafficking, revealed to the General
Attorney's Office some details about at
least 100 false positives carried out in the
eastern plains.
The scandal of flase positives broke in late
2008, and Colombian Army members are
supposed to have killed indigents and other
people to present them as guerrillas
reported as combat casualties.
Rendon's statements linked ex Meta Governor
Luis Carlos Torres, Colonel Efrain Arcos, ex
chief of the 21 Vargas Battalion, and Army
Colonel Hector Cabuya to the crimes. |
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