JEP: There were at least 6,402 victims of “false positives” in Colombia between 2002 and 2008

False positives?

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(CNN Spanish) -

In Colombia, at least 6,402 people were victims of deaths unlawfully presented by the State as casualties in combat between 2002 and 2008, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) reported this Thursday.

In its first phase of investigation of the so-called “Case 03”, the Court's Truth and Responsibility Acknowledgment Chamber focused on six regions of the country: Antioquia, Caribbean Coast, Norte de Santander, Huila, Casanare and Meta.

In a statement, the JEP explained that the decision was made after an "exhaustive" information evaluation process that, among others, included four databases to determine the dimension of the "macrocriminal phenomenon."

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Various official and non-governmental sources identified that this period had the highest number of victims of the so-called “false positives”, as the extrajudicial killings of civilians are known, which were later falsely classified as killed in combat.

According to information from the JEP, 66% of the victims were registered in 10 departments of the country and the phenomenon decreased “drastically” in 2009 when 122 cases were registered compared to the 792 reported in 2008.

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During this period, the country was under the command of Álvaro Uribe Vélez who, through a tweet published this Thursday, questioned the credibility of the court.

In the past, the former senator has denied that he had ordered assassinations and assured that during his government he confronted and sanctioned "all human rights violations."

The JEP figure is even higher than that presented by the Attorney General's Office, which in 2018 reported the identification of 2,248 victims between 1988 and 2014.

The JEP was created within the framework of the peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), signed in September 2016. Its function is to administer transitional justice and to hear alleged crimes committed in the framework of the armed conflict before the December 1, 2016.

Colombia False positives