Bogotá .- Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on Tuesday that the number of victims of executions committed by the military, known as ‘false positives’, is 7,837, 22% more cases than those revealed five years ago by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP).
“The number of young people murdered by the public force led by former president (Álvaro) Uribe and who were presented as guerrillas killed in action rises to 7,837. This is the worst crime against humanity committed in the Americas in this century,” Petro stated on his X account.
In February 2021, the JEP said that, based on its investigations, it established “that at least 6,402 people were illegally killed to be presented as casualties in combat throughout the national territory between 2002 and 2008”, a period that coincides with Uribe’s two terms (2002-2010).
However, Petro today cited a statement by magistrate Pedro Elías Díaz, who in a hearing held last Sunday in Apartadó, in the department of Antioquia (northwest), for the La Resbalosa massacre, perpetrated on February 21, 2005, said that the figure of the ‘false positives’ is higher.
According to Díaz, there are “statistics of homicides and forced disappearances allegedly attributable to the public force between the years 1990 and 2016 at the national level classified as illegitimate deaths presented as combat casualties, corresponding to 7,837 victims.”
“That figure is dynamic as the cases addressed in Macrocase 03, on assassinations and forced disappearances falsely presented as combat casualties by state agents, progress,” added the magistrate about that new number.
Confirmation by the JEP
Regarding this, the president of the JEP, Alejandro Ramelli, explained today that the update of the figure corresponds to the extension of the analysis period, which was previously from 2002 to 2008 and is now from 1990 to 2016, and to a new cross-referencing of data and reports.
“We have always said that the figure of 6,402 is a provisional universe of facts, something that can change,” Ramelli said during the presentation of the indictment report to 20 former FARC guerrillas for the recruitment and use of girls and boys in the armed conflict.
Ramelli reported that data from the Legal Situations Definition Chamber of the JEP is still pending, which is currently holding hearings in which some defendants confess to these crimes.
“It is most likely that even this figure will increase in the future,” said Ramelli.
The so-called ‘false positives,’ one of the darkest chapters of the Colombian armed conflict, were executions of civilians by members of the Army who then presented the victims as guerrillas killed in combat to receive rewards or benefits.
The victims were generally poor or disabled young people who were recruited with false promises of employment and then taken to places in Colombia other than their place of residence where they were executed.
The JEP, a court created by the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC to investigate and try crimes committed during the armed conflict, sentenced retired Army colonel Publio Hernán Mejía last December to 20 years in prison after finding him criminally responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity for these murders.
