Bogotá (EFE).- Eight ex-soldiers of the Colombian Army admitted in a public hearing of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and before victims of the conflict their participation in the murder and forced disappearance of 49 people who were presented as “false positives”. ” between 2002 and 2006 in the municipality of Dabeiba, in the department of Antioquia (northwest).
“Today I am here to tell the truth,” said former colonel Edie Pinzón Turcios, who confessed that his modus operandi consisted of “murdering vulnerable, stigmatized and designated guerrilla people” in Dabeiba. “I destroyed a family, I left a wife without her husband, I left some daughters without their father, I left parents without their son, I prevented a hard-working man from continuing to farm his land and making it a better place,” lamented Pinzón.
The former colonel pointed to “many factors” that led them to commit these executions. One of them is the alliance with the extinct paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
The so-called “false positives” were executions of civilians by members of the Army who were later presented as guerrillas killed in combat to receive rewards or benefits.
According to the JEP, at least 6,402 innocent young people were deceived with promises of false jobs. And executed by members of the Army to improve the statistics of the fight against the guerrillas and receive rewards in return.
confessions
The already retired Major Yaír Rodríguez acknowledged that “the order of the commanders was to end the guerrillas.” Which implied the murder of any individual wearing white or black clothing, since this meant that “they were guerrillas.”
He confessed that they broke into the Edison Alexander Lezcano house, the first “false positive” that was identified and delivered by the JEP in Dabeiba in 2020, and shot repeatedly.
“We did it for pride, honor, following orders and ascending,” but Lezcano “was not a guerrilla,” added the retired major, who was “very sorry.”
Another of the ex-soldiers, Hermes Alvarado, blamed his responsibility for the “false positives” on omitting, keeping quiet and not reporting a lie that continued “for a long time.”
The remains of the bodies of the “false positives” that the former soldiers confessed to were found in December 2019 in the Las Mercedes de Dabeiba cemetery by a group of soldiers and JEP magistrates. During the investigation, a total of 29 mass graves were intervened. And a vault in which 49 bodies were found, according to the National Institute of Legal Medicine.
Of these, eight victims were identified, handed over “with dignity to their families.” And, together with the Prosecutor’s Office, the JEP identified three other people.
In this case, the JEP charged four colonels, two majors, three non-commissioned officers and a professional soldier with war crimes and crimes against humanity for the aforementioned crimes. Two colonels did not accept their responsibility and their proceedings will continue through adversarial proceedings in the JEP Peace Court.
The hearing also included 17 other appearing members of the public force involved in “false positives” in the Dabeiba, Ituango and Carepa cemeteries.
a light of hope
“It is for us, the victims, a strength and a light of hope. Yearning to find out the truth about their missing children, siblings, parents who are still in dark places where they don’t belong,” said Teresita Zapata, mother of Jorge Andrés Zapata, one of the young men illegitimately presented as killed in combat.
“Today we listen to those appearing, we hope they speak from the heart. We know that they seek reconciliation, forgiveness and non-repetition for the victims, to build a better country,” continued Zapata, who concluded: “We learned not to turn off the light, that light that will accompany us in all these meetings, to remember the loved ones that were taken from our families.”
Also present at the hearing for the first time were the Ministers of Justice and Defense, Néstor Ozuna Patiño and Iván Velásquez, respectively. As well as the High Commissioner for Peace, Danilo Rueda, who transmitted a message of reconciliation and non-repetition.
“All this purpose is not simply to reconstruct the events of the past, but mainly to prevent them from happening again,” said Velásquez, who added that “the truth is the supreme guarantee of non-repetition.”