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US-backed Colombian soldiers execute innocent for cash

By Daniel Tencer

Published: July 3, 2009
Updated 4 months ago




The Colombian government of President Alvaro Uribe is facing questions about its handling of the war against the country’s FARC rebels following a UN report that accuses Colombian soldiers of systematically killing innocent people for a cash reward.

The United States is slated to hand over some $750 million in mostly military aid to Colombia this year. The potential contribution of US taxpayers’ money to fund the killing of innocent people — though likely inadvertent on the part of the Colombian government — will almost certainly raise eyebrows among human-rights activists and others who have long criticized the Colombian government’s actions in its war against cocaine and insurgents.

At the heart of the problem is the Colombian government’s practice of paying soldiers for dead bodies of FARC members. Predictably, the incentive has led some soldiers to kill innocent civilians, dress their bodies up as FARC rebels, and hand them in for cash.

The phenomenon has come to be known as “falsos positivos,” or “false positives.”

In April, seven Colombian soldiers were sentenced to 30 years in prison for their involvement in the murder of a farmer who the soldiers had claimed was a FARC rebel.

In a preliminary report, the UN’s rapporteur for extra-judicial executions, Philip Alston, stated that the term “false positives” is itself false, because it suggests that soldiers committing these killings are doing it accidentally — they aren’t.

The phenomenon is well known. The victim is lured under false pretenses by a “recruiter” to a remote location. There, the individual is killed soon after arrival by members of the military. The scene is then manipulated to make it appear as if the individual was legitimately killed in combat. The victim is commonly photographed wearing a guerrilla uniform, and holding a gun or grenade. Victims are often buried anonymously in communal graves, and the killers are rewarded for the results they have achieved in the fight against the guerillas.

The report also states that relatives of the murdered innocent who pursue justice face retribution:

A further problem concerns the systematic harassment of the survivors by the military. A woman from Soacha described how, in 2008, one of her sons disappeared and was reported killed in combat two days later. When another of her sons became active in pursuing the case, he received a series of threats. He was shot and killed earlier this year. Since then, the mother has also received death threats. This is part of a common pattern.

The report is careful to point out that there is no evidence that “false positives” are endorsed by the Uribe government or are a part of government policy.

All of this raises the question of how the U.S. should proceed with its long-standing policy of supporting the Uribe government in its fight against FARC rebels, who have been linked to Colombia’s lucrative underground cocaine exporting industry.

US financial aid to Colombia’s internecine war has spiked from around $86 million per year in 1997 to more than $750 million in 2008, with much of the increase coming during the Bush administration era.

A free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Colombia, agreed to by the Bush administration in 2006, has had little luck getting passed in Congress. The Obama administration is currently investigating “outstanding issues” relating to the deal.





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