False positives?
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(CNN Spanish) --
The extrajudicial executions committed by some members of the Colombian Armed Forces for several years are known in that country as false positives.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) determined in February 2021 that in Colombia, at least 6,402 people were victims of so-called false positives, deaths illegitimately presented by the State as combat casualties between 2002 and 2008.
In the Catatumbo region, in the northwest of the country, for example, at least 120 people killed were presented as killed in combat to "criminally increase the official statistics of military success."
Before the JEP figure on false positives was known, the Attorney General's Office had presented a much lower number in 2018: 2,248 victims of false positives between 1988 and 2014.
As reported in December 2021, "the JEP concluded that the crimes would not have occurred without the Army's institutional policy of counting bodies, without the policy of incentives and the constant pressure exerted by commanders on their subordinates to obtain deaths in 'combat '”.
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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 hear alleged crimes committed in the context of the armed conflict before the December 1, 2016.
Currently, the JEP is holding a series of hearings with accused soldiers and the court will impose the first sanctions related to the cases of false positives.
Members of the civil organization Madres de Falsos Positivos (Mafapo) participate in a protest in front of the court in Bogotá on August 25, 2021. - Thousands of extrajudicial executions known as "false positives" were carried out in the biggest Army scandal Colombian.
(Credit: JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images)
What the Army and former presidents Uribe and Santos say
The Colombian Army as an institution —which says it has investigated the cases of false positives— has rejected the accusations that the high command was linked to the cases of extrajudicial executions, such as when it dismissed a Human Rights Watch report on the matter in 2015.
Shortly after the JEP report in February 2021, the current commander of the National Army Eduardo Enrique Zapateiro posted this tweet.
"We are soldiers of the @COL_EJERCITO, and we will not let ourselves be defeated by more poisonous and perverse vipers that want to attack us, point us out or weaken us. Officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers, we do not give up, we do not give up, always strong with our heads held high. God is with us. U.S".
Twenty-one members of the Army, including a retired general and a civilian, acknowledged their responsibility before the JEP for the false positives of less than 120 people in the Catatumbo area, and another 127 more on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
The JEP charges war crimes and crimes against humanity to 10 soldiers and a civilian for "false positives" in Catatumbo
During the period investigated by the JEP, the country was under the command of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who has not only questioned the credibility of the court, but has also denied that he had ordered murders.
Uribe has said that during his government he confronted and sanctioned "all human rights violations."
Uribe said in 2016 in a letter published on his Twitter account that "hiding behind" the issue of human rights, "some spokesmen for terrorism" said that "terrorists were not killed, but peasants were murdered."
"I ordered that when there were any casualties, that body could not be moved by the Armed Forces but by the representatives of the Attorney General's Office, of the CTI. This was done. Some even stated that it was the repeal of the military criminal jurisdiction due to to excesses of the Prosecutor's Office, which for each removal of the corpse formulated an accusation against the soldiers and police," Uribe wrote in 2017.
"Likewise, in 2008, immediately (after) the complaints about the false positives became known, I removed 27 high-ranking soldiers from the Armed Forces," added the former president.
Meanwhile, his successor in the presidency, Juan Manuel Santos, who had been his Minister of Defense during these events, said in June 2021 before the Truth Commission that in principle he did not believe that these practices existed, but later began to "act" against false positives.
“At the beginning they were just rumors without evidence to support them and that is why I did not give them credibility.
I couldn't believe that something like this could be happening... in early 2007 I started receiving reports from credible sources.
That's where we started to act against false positives," Santos said.
Santos told the Truth Commission that "it was the pressure to produce casualties" that led to an increase in false positives.
"In honor of the truth, I have to say that President Uribe did not oppose the change of this disastrous doctrine that he himself had stimulated. I never received a counterorder nor was I unauthorized," he added.
This is how they plotted false positives to "keep the government happy"
Néstor Guillermo Gutiérrez, a retired Army non-commissioned officer, acknowledged at a JEP hearing in April 2022 that he had murdered innocents.
"I executed. I murdered relatives of those who are here... taking them with lies, with tricks, shooting them, murdering them cruelly, cowardly, and putting a weapon on them and saying (it was) a combat, (it was) a guerrilla."
read: Ten retired soldiers and a civilian acknowledge their participation in more than 100 extrajudicial executions in Colombia, a practice known as "false positives"
Gutiérrez was summoned to a hearing as a defendant in the case of false positives by the Army to acknowledge his responsibility as co-perpetrator for war crimes, homicide of a protected person, forced disappearance, and as an accomplice to these crimes that according to JEP "constitute crimes against humanity and forced disappearance of people.
The ex-military spoke at a recognition hearing before relatives of the victims, as well as representatives of the international community.
Gutiérrez publicly acknowledged his crimes in Catatumbo, a region in the department of Norte de Santander, in northeastern Colombia, on Tuesday.
He recounted that he entered the Army in 1995 and that in 2007, as a first corporal, he was sent to that region as a squad commander in a counter-guerrilla battalion, where he was until December 2008.
"I am not going to justify what I did, because I committed crimes, crimes, we murdered innocent people, peasants. What we murdered were peasants (not guerrillas)," he said.
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Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) says there were at least 6,402 victims of "false positives" in Colombia between 2002 and 2008
According to the JEP, Gutiérrez was part of the "macrocriminality pattern" of the Army, "as the direct executor of several homicides."
In December 2021, 21 members of the Army, including a retired general and a civilian, acknowledged their responsibility before the JEP for the false positives of less than 120 people in the Catatumbo area, and another 127 more on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
The same retired soldier reported that he had prepared a list of 14 innocent peasants who had nothing to do with guerrillas or armed groups;
these would be killed later.
He also said that he negotiated with the paramilitaries, from whom they bought weapons to put on the victims they assassinated, and they simulated combats to deliver peasants whom they pretended to be guerrillas killed in combat.
Of a farmer who he identified by name and surname in front of his relatives, he said: "I told him come on, we are going to work on a farm so that you can take care of the farm."
"Do you know how to handle a gun?" he asked his victim.
"And when I handed him the gun, (he was) scared. I already knew I was going to kill him," Gutierrez said.
The retired soldier says that he does not justify what he did, but what led him and many other soldiers was the pressure from the "senior commanders" to show results: "You had to look for the results no matter what," he said.
"Today (before) the world, I want them to know that they were peasants that I, as a member of the public force, cowardly murdered," said Gutiérrez.
"I took away the illusion of their children due to pressure to keep a government happy. It's not fair."
The retired soldier reported that many of the young people who lured them with lies accompanied the soldiers who voluntarily rebuked them, but beat others who refused.
"We kidnapped them, we took them, we murdered them. That's the truth," Gutiérrez said.
"A criminal, when he sees a policeman or a military man, runs away. An innocent person does not run away. He trusts. So when they saw us (the military), they came calmly because they did not owe anything. And we took him," added the ex-military before the JEP.
"We began to execute innocent people, the peasants of the region," he said.
"At that time I did not think about the damage I was causing the victim... At that time I did not measure the consequences. My heart was blackened (sic)".
"Or I did know, but I didn't want to realize the damage I was doing," he said.
With information from Melissa Velásquez, Florencia Trucco and Fernando Ramos
False positives