Latin America
Related: About this forumJailed Colombia army colonel names ex-commander general as ‘creator of false positives’
Jailed Colombia army colonel names ex-commander general as creator of false positives
Jun 9, 2014 posted by Tim Hinchliffe
A former colonel imprisoned for war crimes has accused the former commander general of Colombias National Army of orchestrating the murder of thousands of innocent civilians, local media reported
Jailed Colonel Robinson Gonzalez, convicted for his own role in the so-called false positives scandal, has named former General Mario Montoya as the architect of what he describes as an institutional rather than isolated practice, reported La FM radio Monday.
False positives is the term used to refer to murders carried out by paramilitary and military troops and later passed off as combat kills as part of the government offensives against Colombias rebel groups.
FACT SHEET: False Positives
Of the 1,000 combat kills claimed by the Army of the North during Montoyas command, 200 were false positives, according to Gonzalez, who claimed that Montoya became the creator of false positives after being pressured to beef up his kill statistics.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/jailed-army-colonel-offers-testimony-colombia-govt-murdered-200-civilians/
Judi Lynn
(160,211 posts)From the article:
Three different ways to kill
Gonzalez explained that there were at least three types of false positives used by the Colombian Army.
In the first scenario, the military would place informants in criminal networks, and feed them false information to instigate an attempted robbery. Once the gangs reached the sites in question, the military would capture those involve and murder them, often along with the informants.
Another mode of false positives involved using military databases to hunt down demobilized guerrillas.
As part of the demobilization process, the former combatants were required to adhere to a government-led reintegration process. The military would send the individuals directives telling them to arrive at a certain location. Once there, the ex-guerrillas would be murdered and counted as combat kills, according to Gonzalez.
The third alleged method of false positives is the most documented. The military, said Gonzalez, would send recruiters into the poorest areas in major Colombian cities and lure in at-risk youths under the guise of employment. Those taken, usually teenagers, would then be transported to the countryside, where they were executed and dressed in guerrilla uniforms.
The case that originally broke the false positives scandal involved just such a conspiracy. Almost 20 teens from the Soacha slum in Bogota were found dead near the Colombo-Venezuelan border in the northeast of the country, their corpses disguised as guerrilla combatants.
Separate reports indicate that the military also targeted labor activists and community political leaders during the years of false positives, and that the corpses of victims of paramilitary violence were also turned in to security forces and passed off as combat kills.
Don't forget, the U.S. Gov't has poured 9 billion US taxpayers' hard earned dollars into this system in the period of time since 2000, as well has having supported it decades in the run-up to Plan Colombia.