Five Colombian soldiers have been charged with the “false-positive” murders of two civilians in order to inflate kill statistics, newspaper El Tiempo reported Wednesday.
Allegedly, the military members killed civilians Humberto de Lopez Quiroz and Nicolas Gonzalo Morales Morales and then dressed them in FARC guerrilla uniforms.
A prosecutor from the National Unit of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law handed down the indictment to Captain Cesar Eslava Combita, Officer Edilio Duarte Jorge Bautista, and Soldiers Luis Alfonso Vega Rodríguez, Andres Felipe Zapata Giovany Sarrazola and Jaime Jimenez.
The alleged murders took place on March 3, 2005 when troops of the Girardot Battalion of the 4th Army Brigade were fighting with the FARC’s 36th Front in the rural area of Campamento in the Antioquia department.
According to NGOs, as of December 2010 more than 3,700 civilians have been murdered by the military since 2002.