Colombian Army Officers Implicated in Killings to be Promoted
Colombian Army Officers Implicated in Killings to be Promoted
Other officers to be promoted to general include Emiro Barrios Jiménez and Jorge Navarrete Jadeth, who paid a thousand dollar booty for the extrajudicial killings of two civilians in Manizales (Caldas), one of the cases known as “false positives,” the killing of unarmed civilians to bolster the officers’ body counts.
We learned about these cases from human rights defenders Jorge Molano and German Romero, who represent the victims in both cases. Both have received death threats, presumably due to their efforts to halt these promotions. In Molano’s view, promoting the officers amounts to “protection of those who are responsible for crimes, an invitation to emulate those actions, and a threat to the victims. It puts in doubt the seriousness of [Colombia’s] human rights policy.”
The San José de Apartadó 2005 massacre
During the first week of February 2005, the Colombian Army was trying to recover from an ambush by FARC leftist guerrillas that resulted in 18 soldiers dying, an episode known as El Porroso, in Mutata (Antioquia). The army’s response was Operation Fenix, a joint military-paramilitary operation, carried out by troops of the Army’s 17th Brigade, along with over one hundred men belonging to the Heroes of Tolova death squads, a paramilitary group that had sown terror in the region for over a decade. Fenix was conceived by then-commander of Second Division, General Mario Montoya, and a group of high officials, including General Héctor Fandiño, the head of the 17th Brigade and the commander of the Velez Battalion - and currently a candidate for promotion - Colonel Orlando Espinosa Beltran.
For five days, from February 18 to 22, the Army and death squads patrolled the San José region. Jaramillo commanded one of the platoons that participated in the operation, which carried out one of the most brutal massacres of the last decade in the Colombian armed conflict. Among those killed were not only charismatic Peace Community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra, but three children (Diener, 11, Natalia, 6 and 18-month-old Santiago were chopped in pieces with machetes.
The cruelty of the massacre caused an international uproar and demand for justice and accountability. But in a country in which 98% of the crimes against civilians go unpunished, the Peace Community massacre proved no exception. Seven years later, despite mountains of evidence of how the operation was planned and carried out with collective Army participation, only a couple low-ranking officers have been convicted. Proceedings against higher-ranking officers, such as Generals Montoya and Fandiño, which require action by Colombia’s Prosecutor General, have been stalled for years in their preliminary phase. The generals haven’t even been requested to give a deposition, much less charged with any crime.
More:
http://forusa.org/blogs/susana-pimiento/colombian-army-officers-implicated-killings-be-promoted/11453
