(CNN Spanish) ––
The Minister of Defense of Colombia, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, reported the initiation of a criminal proceeding against two agents of the National Police in Bogotá, suspected of excessive use of force in an arrest, after which a man died in a clinic.
Holmes said, in a video posted on social networks, that the agents were separated from their positions and are also subject to a disciplinary investigation for "the serious acts" in which they may have participated.
The minister condemned what happened and expressed his solidarity with the relatives of the dead man, who he identified as Javier Humberto Ordóñez Bermúdez.
In a video broadcast on social networks, allegedly linked to the events that occurred between Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, two police officers are observed subjecting the man to the ground with electric shocks from an electro-shock gun on repeated occasions.
In the video, which lasts a little over 2 minutes, the individual is observed being beaten at least once by one of the officials.
You can hear how the man says "please" several times.
Several passersby who record the video ask the agents to stop assaulting him.
Officers are also heard several times asking the man on the ground to put his "hands back".
The circumstances prior to this operation are not clear.
CNN asked the police for details, which referred to the official statements.
Nor have they released the names of the two agents under investigation.
Colonel Necton Lincon Borja Miranda, Operational Commander of Citizen Security of the Metropolitan Police of Bogotá, who lamented the death of the man and expressed his solidarity with the family, reported that the Technical Investigation Corps of the Prosecutor's Office will undertake the investigation and that a group The inter-institutional body will accompany the victim's next of kin.
"We have expressed to the prosecuting body our willingness to provide all the elements that are required and in this way clarify the facts," he said in a video released this Wednesday on social networks.
The Office of the Attorney General of the Nation confirmed on Twitter that it has opened an investigation for alleged irregularity in police procedure after the death of this man, who was a lawyer.
"The Attorney General of the Nation, Francisco Barbosa Delgado, ordered the prioritization of the case," he wrote on his Twitter account.
The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, regretted that the citizen died in a hospital in the Colombian capital.
She reported on Twitter that she will offer the family legal assistance so that there is an exemplary sentence, and she spoke out for a structural reform that prevents and punishes police abuse.
This is not about bad apples.
Life is sacred! ”He wrote on the social network.
Cablenoticias, a CNN affiliate, spoke on Wednesday with Elvia Bermúdez Bonilla, the victim's aunt, who reported that the guard of the building where she resides notified her at dawn that her nephew was being beaten near his residence in the Santa Cecilia neighborhood, in the town of Engativá, and subjecting him with an electric weapon.
The woman added that she was a witness to what happened and that her nephew was transferred in a patrol car and was later told that he died in a clinic.
Police brutality