Colombia Military Accused of Deception on Civilian Deaths
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Version 0 of 1. Many generals and other high-ranking officers in Colombia’s armed forces may have known about a pattern of soldiers killing civilians and passing off the deaths as guerrilla casualties in the campaign against rebel insurgencies, according to a report to be released on Wednesday. The report, by Human Rights Watch, also says that Colombian prosecutors face numerous obstacles in seeking to investigate high-ranking military personnel who may be linked to the killings, including a lack of cooperation from the armed forces and intimidation of key witnesses. A scandal over the killings, which were intended to inflate the number of apparent guerrilla casualties and create a false image of positive results in the country’s struggle against insurgents, erupted in 2008. It resulted in the resignation of the commander of the Colombian Army, the firing of a few high-level officers and stained the reputation of the president at the time, Álvaro Uribe, who aggressively escalated the campaign against the guerrillas. And it also raised questions, which critics say are still relevant, about United States oversight of the human rights record of the Colombian armed forces, Latin America’s largest recipient of military aid from Washington. “It’s crystal clear that the United States has failed to conduct a serious vetting and scrutiny of the actions conducted by Colombian security forces with training, intelligence and equipment provided by the U.S. government during all of these years,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch. The pattern of killings, which occurred from 2002 to 2008, has gained added relevance in recent months with the peace negotiations between the government and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. A major sticking point of those talks is how leaders and combatants on both sides are to be punished for atrocities committed during the conflict. The Human Rights Watch report reveals new information about the possible involvement of high-level officers in the killings, and the difficulties in holding them accountable. Gen. Rodríguez Barragán, the current commander of the armed forces, said that “the subject of false positives has been widely discussed in the Senate.” The report said that at least one other officer had implicated General Barragán himself, but he said that prosecutors had determined that he bore no responsibility. The office of the national prosecutor said on Tuesday evening that no investigation of the general was underway. It was separately reported in the Colombian press that prosecutors had called on four retired generals to speak to investigators, including one who had headed the armed forces during the peak of the civilian killings. The report said that prosecutors were investigating more than 3,700 civilian killings linked to government forces. More than 800 soldiers have been convicted in the killings, according to the report. Most, however, were of low rank, and no officer who was commanding a brigade or was higher up in the chain of command at the time of the killings has been convicted. Interviews of Army officials conducted by Human Rights Watch and testimony given to prosecutors that the group reviewed indicate that the tactics used in the killings were largely consistent across units. Civilians were enticed to go to a place where they would be met by waiting soldiers, who shot them and then placed weapons by their bodies to make it appear that they were guerrillas. Commanders would then reward the soldiers with vacation days. Some witnesses said that at the very least, commanders should have been suspicious of many of the civilian killings passed off as rebel casualties. In many cases, the victims were said to be carrying weapons, like handguns, which are rarely used by guerrillas; the killings occurred in areas where guerrillas did not typically operate; or they were carried out by troops not generally engaged in combat operations. The victims included vagrants, street vendors, common criminals and manual laborers. The report called on Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, to make the prosecution of the killings a priority and to ensure military cooperation with those investigations. It also called on the United States to suspend a portion of its military aid to Colombia and enforce conditions that call for human rights cases to be tried only in civilian courts. A spokeswoman at the American Embassy in Bogotá said that officials there had not yet seen the report and could not comment on it. |