Colombia: Soldiers Accused of Extrajudicial Killings Freed


by Helda MartĂ*nez
Inter Press Service
2010-01-13


SOACHA, Colombia, Jan 13, 2010 (IPS) - Over the last two weeks, 31 Colombian soldiers accused of the forced disappearance and murder of 11 young men from the poor Bogotá suburb of Soacha have been released from prison on the grounds that they were not formally indicted within 90 days of their arrest, as established by Colombian law.

Of the 42 members of the Colombian army implicated in what is known here as the "Soacha case", 18 were released between Dec. 30 and Jan. 7, six on Tuesday Jan. 12 and seven more on Wednesday Jan. 13.

They are facing charges of luring a number of young men from Soacha in August and September 2008 with false job promises, murdering them, then disguising and presenting them as guerrillas killed in combat (euphemistically referred to as "false positives").

The scandal, which broke out in late 2008, led to the removal of three generals and 24 other officers and noncommissioned officers, as well as the resignation of then army chief General Mario Montoya, regarded as one of the promoters of the so-called "body count" system, which uses incentives like weekend passes, cash bonuses, promotions and trips abroad to reward soldiers and officers for "results" in the counterinsurgency effort.

A total of 1,900 "false positive" cases are awaiting investigation by the Human Rights Unit of the Attorney General's Office.

Soacha and the neighbouring suburb of Ciudad BolĂ*var, which are located to the south of the Colombian capital, have absorbed a large number of the over three million people displaced by the armed conflict that has raged for over four decades between government security forces and rightwing paramilitary militias on one hand and leftist guerrillas on the other.

The victims targeted in the army's extrajudicial killings - who numbered in the thousands, according to human rights groups - were generally young men from poor districts like Soacha who received attractive job offers from recruiters.

But in the case of the 11 men from Soacha, their bodies showed up in morgues or mass graves hundreds of km from Bogotá just a few days after they left or went missing from their homes. And although they were wearing civilian clothes when they set out for their supposed new jobs, their bodies were found dressed in FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrilla fatigues.

The first rumours of what had happened to them reached their families through an employee of the government's national forensic service.

The newspapers then picked up the story, which bloomed into a full-blown international scandal.

Mothers demand justice

The mothers of the young men, who have come together to fight for justice, told reporters Monday that they would take the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC), arguing that the soldiers' release clearly indicated that no justice was possible in Colombia.

The ICC, based in The Hague, was set up to investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in cases where countries directly connected with such crimes are not able or willing to carry out prosecutions themselves.

After Tuesday's hearing, in which a judge ordered the release of six of the soldiers, Carmenza GĂłmez said through tears: "They are mocking us, we mothers who feel this enormous pain. They are heartless to leave so many mothers without sons and so many children without fathers."

Two of GĂłmez's sons have been killed, "the first, after receiving death threats (from an illegal armed group), and the second because he believed in false promises of work, which led him to his death."

GĂłmez broke the silence in the courtroom after the six-hour hearing that ended in the order for the soldiers' release, despite the judge's acknowledgement that the failure to meet the 90-day deadline for an indictment was partly due to delaying tactics by the troops' defence attorneys.

The accused spent more than 200 days in remand.

The defence lawyers argued that the Supreme Court and Consejo Superior de la Judicatura (High Council of the Judiciary) took too much time deciding that the cases would be tried by the ordinary courts, rather than the military justice system.

The lead prosecutor on the case, Guillermo Mendoza, told the press that the judge "did not apply the standard establishing that release is not warranted if the deadline is not met due to delaying tactics, or when there is a just or reasonable cause that stood in the way of the start of the oral trial."

Ombudsman VĂłlmar PĂ©rez suggested that in cases involving human rights violations and crimes against humanity, the old penal system be used, in order to lengthen the timeframes for presenting formal indictments.

In a statement, rightwing President Ă