Three army generals have agreed to cooperate with Colombia’s war crimes tribunal to solve 604 extrajudicial killings that were committed under their watch between 2002 and 2008.

The generals were part of a group of 28 army officials who had been charged by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) with the killings carried out in the Caribbean region between 2002 and 2008.

From confession to justice

Twenty-five of the 28 accused officials have formally acknowledged their role in the killings and forced disappearances in writing to the JEP.

The confessions exposed the existence of an organized crime structure within the Army’s Caribbean divisions.

The JEP investigation revealed that a macro-criminal organization structured into nodes was consolidated in the Caribbean Coast units. This was sustained by a system of pressure to achieve combat kills, with demands and sanctions imposed on those who did not present operational results. Added to this were incentives and rewards for those who stood out in reports of deaths in combat. Furthermore, acts of concealment and a lack of controls contributed to the implementation of a policy aimed at presenting murders and forced disappearances as legitimate casualties, in order to artificially inflate operational results as an indicator of military victory.

JEP

The three generals and 22 officers will enter a process in which they will have to publicly explain what exactly transpired.

The victims and their families will be active participants in this part of the process, which precedes sentencing.

If the admitted war criminals help uncover the truth, they will evade prison and be given restorative sentences.

The central goal of the JEP is to achieve the highest level of justice for the victims, considering the fact that Colombia’s armed conflict left 10 million victims.

The remaining three officers, who have not accepted responsibility for the extrajudicial executions, will stand trial before the JEP and risk prison sentences of up to 20 years.

False positives scandal

During former president Alvaro Uribe’s presidency between 2002 and 2008, the army carried out over 6000 extrajudicial killings in an attempt to inflate guerrilla casualties and uphold an illusion of success.

The practice started before Uribe, but was generalized as part of the government’s democratic security policy.

Army officers who inflated their combat kills were rewarded with monetary benefits and promotions.

The objective of the de facto policy of “body count” was to add up as many “combat” casualties as possible, favoring the body of the supposed enemy fallen in combat as the only real indicator of the success of the military effort and dismissing captures as problematic results that did not lead to military victory. This objective was achieved through pressure on and threats made to the troops, as well as rewards and incentives for those who reported the most deaths, promoting a fierce competition to occupy the first place in the official statistics, regardless of the specialty of the military unit in question, or that the guerrillas had already been strategically defeated or withdrawn outside the jurisdiction of the 4th Brigade and paramilitary groups had already demobilized.

JEP

More than four thousand members of the military submitted to the JEP in an attempt to get out of prison.