Colombian court ruling sentences 12 ex-military officers

Special court delivered its first sentences against state security forces in Colombia’s decades-long war.

A special Colombian court sentenced 12 former military officers to between five and eight years of reparation work for their involvement in 135 “false positive” deaths – killing civilians and then falsely reporting them as rebel fighters – between the years 2002 and 2005.

Thursday’s landmark ruling is the first time the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Colombia’s transitional justice body, issued individual sentences against government security forces for crimes committed in the decades-long war with FARC rebels that ended in 2016.

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From 2002 to 2008, there were 6,402 recorded victims of the “false positives,” according to the JEP, but victim groups believe the number to be higher.

Officers used the killings, which often targeted poor and disabled young people, to inflate their reputations and earn promotions during the bloody war against rebel groups, which the United States backed under Plan Colombia.

The crimes constitute one of eleven “macrocases” being investigated by the JEP, which was set up following the 2016 peace deal to investigate abuses by rebels, paramilitaries, and state security forces. Earlier this week, it introduced its first individual sanctions against FARC leaders.

The verdict focuses on one of three subcases within the macrocase, related to crimes committed by the “La Popa” Battalion on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

The case marks a milestone in Colombia, where families of victims have waited decades for justice over the state-sanctioned killings of vulnerable loved ones.

“We have managed to show the country and the world that these young people were not guerrillas, that they were lured away by deception, murdered, and made to look like guerrillas,” Blanca Nubia Monroy, whose son was a victim of a “false positive” killing, told Al Jazeera.

However, she said that reparations work is insufficient punishment, and that the commanders should “pay for what they did to these young people” by serving prison sentences.

Denying involvement in killings

The 12 officers convicted were allowed to avoid prison by confessing their involvement in the killings. They will work on six separate reparation projects in collaboration with victims.

“This ruling ultimately recognises that through this form of restorative transitional justice, we can reduce impunity for serious human rights violations,” said Gerson Arias, conflict and security investigator at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Colombian think tank.

Three members of the Battalion, including its leader, Colonel Publio Hernan Mejia, denied their involvement in the killings and now face a further trial and jail sentences of up to 20 years.

The “false positives” occurred under President Alvaro Uribe’s administration and remain one of the most controversial episodes in the 50-year conflict between FARC rebels and the Colombian state, which killed more than 450,000 people.