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Colombia acts on massacres – punishing whistleblower and promoting officers
Source: The Guardian
Colombia acts on massacres – punishing whistleblower and promoting officers
Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
Wednesday 24 June 2015 05.34 BST
Sergeant Carlos Mora started to suspect there was something fishy about his brigade’s combat kills when he was posted to an intelligence unit in the region of Norte de Santander in north-east Colombia in 2006.
After a sudden spike in the number of “positive” results, he noticed that the corpses of supposed leftwing guerrillas killed in skirmishes with troops seemed oddly placed, and that weapons found next to the bodies often matched those previously confiscated from common criminals.
Mora reported his suspicions to his superior officers, but was met with insults and harassment, and found himself sent on increasingly dangerous assignments.
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Prosecutors are currently investigating 3,000 cases in which civilians across the country were allegedly murdered by soldiers and presented as combatants to boost body counts, in practice that has come to be known as “false positives”.
But according to a new report from Human Rights Watch, commanding officers in charge of troops implicated in the scandal have continued to rise through the military ranks without ever being held responsible, while those who denounced the murders have been left in fear for their lives.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
Wednesday 24 June 2015 05.34 BST
Sergeant Carlos Mora started to suspect there was something fishy about his brigade’s combat kills when he was posted to an intelligence unit in the region of Norte de Santander in north-east Colombia in 2006.
After a sudden spike in the number of “positive” results, he noticed that the corpses of supposed leftwing guerrillas killed in skirmishes with troops seemed oddly placed, and that weapons found next to the bodies often matched those previously confiscated from common criminals.
Mora reported his suspicions to his superior officers, but was met with insults and harassment, and found himself sent on increasingly dangerous assignments.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Prosecutors are currently investigating 3,000 cases in which civilians across the country were allegedly murdered by soldiers and presented as combatants to boost body counts, in practice that has come to be known as “false positives”.
But according to a new report from Human Rights Watch, commanding officers in charge of troops implicated in the scandal have continued to rise through the military ranks without ever being held responsible, while those who denounced the murders have been left in fear for their lives.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/24/colombian-army-killed-thousands-civilians-human-rights-watch