False positives: retired soldiers will admit for the first time to have executed civilians in Colombia

This Tuesday, ten retired soldiers will admit their responsibility in the execution of more than one hundred civilians in Colombia that they presented as guerrillas fallen in combat, in an unprecedented acknowledgment before the relatives of the victims.

At the hearing organized by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in Ocaña, in the department of Norte de Santander, on the border with Venezuela, the uniformed officers will make their first public acknowledgment for the disappearance of 120 young people in this and other towns and then kill them in cold blood.

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The court that emerged from the historic 2016 peace agreement will hear the story of a general, four colonels, five officers and a civilian who collaborated in the biggest scandal in the history of the Colombian Armed Forces known as “false positives.”

Those appearing “will acknowledge before the courts, the victims and the country their responsibility” for the acts they committed between 2007 and 2008, reported the JEP, which had charged them with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On the morning of this Tuesday, dozens of people arrived at a university theater in Ocaña ready for the historic audience.

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The former soldiers are going to “deepen, expose more clearly, answer the questions and above all (they are going) to acknowledge responsibility live and direct, facing the victims and the country,” said Judge Catalina Díaz, minutes before the start of the investigation. audience.

The JEP determined that Ocaña was the scene of an atrocious practice devised in a battalion located at the entrance to the town of some 100,000 inhabitants, and motivated by an “institutional policy of the army of counting bodies” to inflate its achievements in the fight against the guerrilla. and other armed groups.

According to the court, more than 6,400 civilians were executed between 2002 and 2008 after being lured to areas far from where they lived.

Catatumbo, as this region is known, is the place in the world with the most coca leaf crops.

Most of the “false positives” occurred during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), who has always maintained that they were isolated acts.

Emerged from the 2016 peace agreement that disarmed the FARC guerrillas, this court judges the worst crimes of a conflict of more than half a century that leaves more than nine million victims among dead, mutilated, kidnapped and disappeared.

The pact negotiated in Cuba establishes that those who confess their crimes and make amends to their victims will receive alternative sentences to prison.

Source: Elcomercio

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