
Reality-testing the press release: Billboard for the Colombian Army’s Fourth Brigade, Medellin. “I feel protected because I can count on my Fourth Brigade.” “The brigade, patrolling alongside AUC units, is accused of killing dozens of civilians, dressing their bodies in camouflage and presenting them as guerrillas killed in combat” in areas outside Medellin, according to a report from the CIP
… the pressure from some generals to produce enemy casualties … also contributed to making the production of corpses an end in itself, because promotions and leave days depended on producing them
Semana (Colombia) this week on the progress of investigations into “false positives”: kidnappings and summary executions by Colombian military units whose victims would then be dressed in fatigues and counted as “rebels killed in action.”
Your tax dollars at work. The story has been heavily covered in recent weeks there in the Colombian press. More and more stories of young men with no militant or guerrilla connections, promised jobs in another province by soldiers, then showing up later, dressed in fatigues, to be accounted for as “rebels killed in action.”
Got to keep that efficiency index up to keep the funding rolling in!
In El Tiempo (Bogotá) today, the headline is “Uribe declares that the armed forces were infiltrated by terrorists!”
Uribe is shocked! shocked! to learn that military units cooperated with paramilitaries who were committing atrocities while also making sure that candidates of Uribe’s own political base in Congress got elected!
Hasty translation:
Indiferencia ante las denuncias y laxitud a la hora de hacer las operaciones, fueron algunos de los hallazgos de la Comisión que investigó los casos de militares involucrados en el escándalo de las ejecuciones extrajudiciales. ¿Ahora qué viene?
Indifference in the face of the accusations and negligence when it came time to act, these were some of the findings of the commisssion investigting the case of Colombian soldiers involved in the scandal of extrajudicial executions. What next?
La explosiva noticia de que el gobierno había resuelto, de un tajo, mandar a 24 oficiales y suboficiales del Ejército a vestir el Everfit, como reacción al escabroso caso de los desaparecidos de Soacha tiene a muchos haciendo una pregunta preocupante ¿Todos esos generales y coroneles tenían que ver con semejante asunto tan oscuro?
The explosive news that the government had decided to fit 24 officers and noncoms for the leisure suits of retirement as a reaction to the disgusting case of the Soacha disappearances has many asking a worrying question. Were all these generals and colonels involved in this same sort of dark business?
La respuesta es: no se sabe aún, y su salida no implica que se haya comprobado que tengan responsabilidades disciplinarias y muchos menos penales en estos macabros casos. Por eso es tan importante explicar por qué se creó la Comisión Especial de Investigación del Ministerio de Defensa, cuál fue su misión, y cuáles sus recomendaciones. Y por qué de ahí, el presidente Álvaro Uribe y su comandante en jefe de las Fuerzas Armadas, general Fredy Padilla de León, resolvieron sacar a estos pesos pesados.
The answer is: We do not know yet, and the mass departure does not mean that any administrative, much less criminal, charges against these officers have been proven in these macabre cases. That is why it is so important to explain that a special commission of inquiry was created by the Ministry of Defense, what its mission was and what its recommendations were. And why President Uribe and his armed forces commander, General Freddy, decided to take out this heavy hitters.
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