Petro says that extrajudicial executions are “the worst crime against humanity”

President Gustavo Petro affirmed on Thursday that the extrajudicial executions committed in Colombia are “the worst crime against humanity” in recent times and that the main responsibility of his government is not to repeat them.

The president spoke after the day before a group of 25 retired soldiers -among them eight officers- recognized in a hearing their responsibility in 49 extrajudicial executions committed between 2002 and 2006 in the municipality of Dabeiba, in Antioquia, in the northwest of the country .

The victims were peasants accused of being guerrilla collaborators, insurgents who had laid down their weapons, and witnesses to these executions, such as gravediggers who had knowledge of the location of the corpses.

In Colombia these extrajudicial executions are known as “false positives”. The military and transitional criminal justice system, created after the 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla, is investigating the responsibility of members of the Armed Forces in these murders.

Petro stated that the intellectual and material authors of these crimes “have written one of the worst pages in the history of humanity” and added that security “built on the innocent blood of thousands is not security, it is the greatest human insecurity.”

In turn, he stated that the greatest responsibility of his government is, in addition to repairing the victims, that “it does not happen again in our history.”

According to figures from the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), one of the bodies that make up transitional justice, between 2002 and 2008, 6,402 of these extrajudicial executions or “false positives” were committed.

According to the authorities, those executed were civilians who were killed and presented as guerrillas killed in combat, thus increasing the numbers of the fight against the insurgency.

Former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), under whose government these executions were reportedly committed, also reacted to the military’s recognition of responsibility hearing.

“Those committed during my government stained the democratic security that served the country well. Any of these crimes is serious regardless of the number or the cases of false accusations, ”said the former president on his Twitter account.

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