Bogota (EFE).- Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace on Wednesday indicted four retired army generals and 35 officers and enlisted ranks for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the country’s decades-long internal conflict, the tribunal announced.
The charges relate to 434 deaths and eight victims of other crimes in connection with what became known in Colombia as the “false positives” scandal, in which the Army murdered thousands of people and falsely reported their deaths as combat casualties in the internal conflict against leftist rebel groups.
Retired generals Óscar Enrique González, Luis Roberto Pico, Jorge Ernesto Rodríguez, and Juan Carlos Piza, commanders, and heads of operations of the IV Brigade in the northwestern region of Antioquia between 2004 and 2007, were accused of spearheading a “body count” policy that pressured military units to report a minimum number of monthly combat casualties as the sole measure of success.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a transitional justice mechanism created after the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, found in previous indictments that the policy, implemented through pressure and awards, led to extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians and rebels who had already laid down their arms.
On Wednesday, the court also indicted 25 other officers and 10 non-commissioned officers from six battalions for implementing the policy, and two civilians for recruiting potential victims and delivering them to the military in exchange for money.
The court found that in 17 cases the army murdered rebel fighters who surrendered intending to benefit from official demobilization and reintegration programs, and that at least 187 civilians were killed on arbitrary and unsubstantiated accusations of guerrilla affiliation, in some cases using torture to extract confessions.
In addition, at least 146 people were recruited through false offers of employment by the two civilians, who were also indicted for delivering them to the army in exchange for money and even helping to set up the scenes of the fake battles by providing the victims with uniforms and weapons.
The court found that 10 of the victims, who happened to be near where the troops were patrolling, were killed in improvised circumstances.
The victims included 26 minor children.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace has issued 106 indictments against the “most responsible persons” involved in at least 6,402 cases of “false positives.”
Of the accused, 92 have itted responsibility and 14 have denied the charges. EFE
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