The Colombian government charged 100 soliders with killing civilians, Radio Caracol reported Thursday.
In a practice known as creating “false postitives,” the soldiers allegedly killed at least 50 civilians, including peasants, labor leaders and coffee workers, and then disguised them as guerillas to artificially boost their success rate against the FARC.
The crimes allegedly took place between 2002 and 2008, mostly in the departments of Caldas, Quindio, and Risaralda, in the heart of Colombia’s coffee growing region.
The Prosecutor General’s office implicated colonels, commanders, deputy commanders and professional soldiers in the scandal.
The “false positives” scandal first came to light in 2008. Since then hundreds of members of Colombia’s armed forces have been tried for the crime and incidents continue to be reported.