Retired soldiers accused of extrajudicial executions at a hearing with relatives of their victims in Ocaña (Colombia). Photo EFE
In the same town in Colombia where they committed their crimes in the 2000s, ten retired soldiers began to identify in front of the families of the victims. the cold-blooded execution of a hundred civilians they are depicted as guerrillas who have fallen in battle.
At an earlier hearing on Tuesday organized by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in Ocaña, in the Norte de Santander department, on the Venezuelan border, the soldiers openly confessed their responsibility for the disappearance and subsequent killings of 120 young people, mostly poor.
About 50 relatives of the victims in a row entered a university theater in this town, showing pictures of their relatives.
On stage they sat face to face in front of the victims and five magistrates of the court coming out of the historic peace agreement in 2016, which until Wednesday will hear the stories of a general, four colonels, five officers and a civilian who collaborated in the crimes.
Photos of victims at a public hearing in Ocaña (Colombia). Photo EFE
The honor
“I ask you to clear the names of our relatives (…) they are working with farmers, not as they are labeled as subversives, guerrillas, bandits,” Eduvina Becerra said, a partner of José Ortega, a farmer who lived about 300 years. kilometers from Ocaña before being killed.
His lawyers and dozens of people remained silent before the scary story during the hearing.
“I accept and accept my responsibility as co-author”Corporal Néstor Gutiérrez spoke and apologized.
“We have killed (a) innocent people, farmers” and my commitment is to “clarify it here before opinion, before the world, before the country”, added the former non-commissioned officer of the Army’s XV Mobile Brigade.
Relatives of the victims during a public hearing to identify those who appear to have been charged for “false positives”. Photo EFE
Known as “false positives”, the killings of civilians were portrayed as guerrilla fallen in battle was the biggest scandal in the history of the Colombian Armed Forces.
Former soldiers and other perpetrators of the protracted fighting in Colombia are being held accountable to the JEP for their crimes as part of the peace agreement that disarmed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2017. Those who confessed their crimes and make payments to victims They will receive alternative prison sentences.
details
Amidst the tears of the victims, the accused provided names and details about the way they killed their relatives, most of them were men between 25 and 35 years old.
General Paulino Coronado, former commander of the 30th Brigade present at the border line, was the highest -ranking uniformed officer to face the historic two -day hearing.
During his tenure, the ten accused gave the order “Without it criminal conduct would not have occurred in a systematic and generalized manner,” Judge Catalina Díaz said in her speech.
JEP identified Ocaña as the scene of a fierce exercise conducted in a barracks located at the entrance to the town of approximately 100,000 inhabitants, and prompted a “institutional policy of the army as a corporation” to increase their achievements in the fight against guerrillas and other armed groups.
“The army deceived us, they killed our comrades”, “brothers”, “children”, allegedly by Sandra Barbosa, sister of Javier Peñuela, whom they wanted to pass on as an ELN guerrilla.
The peace court defined two types of “false positives”: One consists of take the deceived youth to towns far from their homes and then kill them. Second, the victims were farmers held by force in Ocaña and other municipalities in the Catatumbo region, which has the largest number of drug crops in the world.
A woman holding a photograph of a victim. Photo EFE
In return, the military received awards, permits, decorations and promotions, Judge Diaz detailed. According to the court, more than 6,400 civilians were killed between 2002 and 2008, of which 402 died in this border area.
The peace court has convicted the worst crime of half a century of conflict that has left more than nine million victims dead, beheaded, abducted and missing.
The JEP magistrates will identify the sentences of the former military, then review their testimonies and compare them to their investigations.
Victims will have 15 days to express themselves about the current hearings and then know the verdicts, the justice of the peace reported.
Most ‘false positives’ took place during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), which maintains that these are separate activities. On their account, the military said they were under pressure to present results to the government.
AFP agency
PB
Source: Clarin
