State crimes
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During a historic hearing, ten retired soldiers admitted their responsibility for the assassination of civilians, whom the army passed off as guerrillas who had died in combat. A scandal that goes back to the highest peak of the state.
“I’m not going to justify myself, we murdered innocent people.” In icy silence, nearly two decades after the events, Nestor Guillermo Gutierrez confesses. Yes, this former non-commissioned officer of the 15th Mobile Brigade took part in the scandal of the “false positives”, one of the worst state crimes committed during the long armed conflict that has bloodied Colombia. Between 2002 and 2008, soldiers coldly murdered at least 6,402 civilians by passing them off as guerrillas killed in action, in order to inflate the statistics, under pressure from the government of Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) who demanded results in its war against the guerrillas, in particular that of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
With nine other soldiers, including a general and four colonels, Nestor Gutierrez appeared voluntarily, Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26, during a public hearing of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) organized in Ocaña, a small town in the Norte region. from Santander. A historic hearing for the South American nation, because it is supposed to lift the veil on one of the pages…