21 army personnel jailed for role in Colombia’s ‘dirty war’

A COLOMBIAN court has handed down decades-long sentences to 21 soldiers and top military officials for the extrajudicial killing of five youths in 2008 in a town south of Bogota in a case that puts the brutalities of the country’s explosive “false positives” scandal on trial years after the fact.

The 21 men were sentenced on Monday to between 37 and 52 years in prison for the crimes of aggravated homicide and forced disappearance, among other charges, from nearly a decade ago.

According to evidence, the officials captured the five youths in a “deceptive way” in Soacha and took them nearly 644km away to Ocaña, near the border with Venezuela, where they killed them and made them look like guerrilla rebels killed in combat.

The youths were not an isolated case. The same practice was used systematically under former far-right president Alvaro Uribe in what has become known as the “false positives” scandal.

The scandal broke in 2008, revealing a concerted military strategy of murdering civilians, including homeless and mentally ill people, and dressing them in guerrilla fatigues to boost the government’s body count in the war on rebels. More than 3 000 people were killed as “false positives” during Uribe’s two terms in office.

The case was treated as a crime against humanity.

“The bodies showed physical mistreatment and killing shots, which does not evidence a combat as the military men claimed when presenting the youths to the authorities,” medical experts said. “They put weapons on the victims with the goal of giving legitimacy to the illegal action.”