Jail for 21 in ‘false positives’ murders

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 farright President Alvaro Uribe in what has become known as the “false positives” scandal.

The shocking 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 stated during the trial. “They put weapons on the victims with the goal of giving legitimacy to the illegal action.”

The judge overseeing the case did not rule out the 21 accused also being brought in the future to face trial in the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the body that will hear human rights and war crime cases against members of the military and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrilla forces as part of the efforts in transitional justice under the historic peace agreement reached last year with Colombia’s largest guerrilla group.