Scandal of vulnerable Colombian citizens killed for €1,500 bonus [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

The Irish Times - Saturday, June 19, 2010
Scandal of vulnerable Colombian citizens killed for €1,500 bonus

TOM HENNIGAN in Bogotá

Many men have been disappearing – only for families to find out the army had shot them

WHEN Luz Marina Bernal’s 26-year old son went missing in February 2008, she immediately raised the alarm. Fair Leonardo Porras Bernal had a mental age of nine, could not read or write, and never strayed too far from his home in Soacha, a gritty satellite town of Bogotá, the capital of Colombia.

“He would never go off on his own. He would only go out with someone from the family. We searched hospitals, refuges, jails and filed a missing person report with the police, but there was no news until that August,” remembers Ms Bernal.

The news, when it came, stunned her. Fair Leonardo was dead, and had been buried in a common grave hundreds of kilometres away in the far north of the country. The army said they had killed him during combat with a group of guerrillas just four days after he went missing.

For Ms Bernal, it made no sense. How had her mentally disabled son transformed himself into a uniformed, armed guerrilla ready to take on South America’s most battle-hardened military, just four days after suddenly disappearing from home?

More:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0619/1224272868802.html