Colombian government urged to end ‘extra-judicial’ executions

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The Colombian office of the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights has asked the government and its military to ‘’clarify and put an end to the practice of alleged extra-judicial executions’’ that may have left as many as 80 dead, reports El Nuevo Herald.

In the past week alone, the bodies of 45 young men have been found in unmarked graves, 23 of them in northern Santander province, sparking a furor in this violence-riddled South American nation.

Although the identities of the killers has not been determined, Colombian authorities have said they are investigating the possible existence of death squads within the military that portray the dead as enemy combatants killed in firefights.

Other theories are that the young victims were recruited by drug traffickers or paramilitary groups, now reorganizing after the dissolution in 2006 of the umbrella United Self-Defenses of Colombia under a surrender agreement with President Alvaro Uribe.

The attorney general’s office said Friday that some of the victims were young men who disappeared from low-income neighborhoods in Bogotá after reportedly receiving offers of employment.

Bogotá Government Secretary Clara López said last week that the victims were ‘’forcefully disappeared and murdered’’ after having been recruited by illegal organizations.

Read the rest of the dispatch here.

Click here to read a recent Los Angeles Times editorial on Colombia’s armed forces here. Chris Kraul, our correspondent in Colombia, filed this dispatch on the rising number of killings by armed forces in Colombia in late August.

Click here for more on Colombia.

— Deborah Bonello