Ten former members of the Colombian military have publicly acknowledged their role in the 2007 and 2008 killings of more than 100 civilians, who were falsely portrayed as armed group members killed in combat with the army. The admissions were made on Tuesday during a historic public hearing of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) tribunal in the Norte de Santander department near Colombia’s border with Venezuela, where the killings took place. The tribunal was created under a 2016 peace deal between the Colombian government and the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels. It is meant to try former combatants, doling out alternative punishments in exchange for full disclosure of incidents that took place during Colombia’s decades-long, internal armed conflict.
On Tuesday, a former military general, four colonels, five other army officials and one civilian said they participated in the kidnapping of 120 youth from the town of Ocana and neighboring communities to kill and later present them as members of left-wing guerilla and other armed groups that operated in the area. “I recognize and accept my responsibility as a co-perpetrator of these war crimes,” said Nestor Gutierrez, who was the corporal of the 15th mobile brigade when the killings occurred. “We killed innocent people, peasants. I want to emphasize this: Those we killed were simple peasants,” he said, adding that pressure from higher-ups and “demands for results” played a role in what happened.
The so-called “false positives” scandal has rocked Colombia, as the loved ones of the victims for decades have demanded justice and accountability—and insisted that their relatives were not involved with armed groups. The JEP last year said the Colombian military carried out more than 6,400 of these extrajudicial killings between 2002 and 2008, when President Alvaro Uribe was in power. But rights groups and relatives have said the real number could be much higher.
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