Colombian court accuses soldiers of murdering at least 120 civilians

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Colombian court accuses soldiers of murdering at least 120 civilians

Reuters in Bogotá
Tue 6 Jul 2021 20.03 BST

A Colombian court has accused 10 members of the military and a civilian of forcibly disappearing 24 people and murdering at least 120 civilians and falsely presenting them as guerrilla fighters who had been killed in combat.

The charges on Tuesday marked the first time Colombia’s special jurisdiction for peace (JEP) tribunal has accused members of Colombia’s army in connection with the so-called false positives scandal, in which soldiers murdered civilians and classified them as rebels killed in combat so they could receive promotions or other benefits.

The defendants played a decisive role in the murders, which were presented as combat deaths in the Catatumbo region of Colombia’s Norte de Santander province between January 2007 and August 2008, in order to inflate body counts, the court said.

The accused, identified by the JEP as those responsible for giving orders without which the crimes would not have systematically happened, include a general, six officers, three non-commissioned officers and a civilian.

“It was a pattern of macrocriminality, which is to say, the repetition of at least 120 murders during two years in the same region by the same group of people associated with a criminal organization and following the same modus operandi,” said the magistrate, Catalina Díaz.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/06/colombia-court-military-civilians-killed-false-positives

[captain queeg]

1. The fat blob wishes he was down there, he'd have fit right in.