Colombian court ruling sentences 12 ex-military officers

Special tribunal delivered its archetypal sentences against authorities information forces successful Colombia’s decades-long war.

A peculiar Colombian tribunal sentenced 12 erstwhile subject officers to betwixt 5 and 8 years of reparation enactment for their engagement successful 135 “false positive” deaths – sidesplitting civilians and past falsely reporting them arsenic rebel fighters – betwixt the years 2002 and 2005.

Thursday’s landmark ruling is the archetypal clip the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Colombia’s transitional justness body, issued idiosyncratic sentences against authorities information forces for crimes committed successful the decades-long warfare with FARC rebels that ended successful 2016.

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From 2002 to 2008, determination were 6,402 recorded victims of the “false positives,” according to the JEP, but unfortunate groups judge the fig to beryllium higher.

Officers utilized the killings, which often targeted mediocre and disabled young people, to inflate their reputations and gain promotions during the bloody warfare against rebel groups, which the United States backed nether Plan Colombia.

The crimes represent 1 of eleven “macrocases” being investigated by the JEP, which was acceptable up pursuing the 2016 bid woody to analyse abuses by rebels, paramilitaries, and authorities information forces. Earlier this week, it introduced its first idiosyncratic sanctions against FARC leaders.

The verdict focuses connected 1 of 3 subcases wrong the macrocase, related to crimes committed by the “La Popa” Battalion connected Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

The lawsuit marks a milestone successful Colombia, wherever families of victims person waited decades for justness implicit the state-sanctioned killings of susceptible loved ones.

“We person managed to amusement the state and the satellite that these young radical were not guerrillas, that they were lured distant by deception, murdered, and made to look similar guerrillas,” Blanca Nubia Monroy, whose lad was a unfortunate of a “false positive” killing, told Al Jazeera.

However, she said that reparations enactment is insufficient punishment, and that the commanders should “pay for what they did to these young people” by serving situation sentences.

Denying engagement successful killings

The 12 officers convicted were allowed to debar situation by confessing their engagement successful the killings. They volition enactment connected six abstracted reparation projects successful collaboration with victims.

“This ruling yet recognises that done this signifier of restorative transitional justice, we tin trim impunity for superior quality rights violations,” said Gerson Arias, struggle and information researcher astatine the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Colombian deliberation tank.

Three members of the Battalion, including its leader, Colonel Publio Hernan Mejia, denied their engagement successful the killings and present look a further proceedings and jailhouse sentences of up to 20 years.

The “false positives” occurred nether President Alvaro Uribe’s medication and stay 1 of the astir arguable episodes successful the 50-year struggle betwixt FARC rebels and the Colombian state, which killed much than 450,000 people.