Colombia’s Defense Minister said Thursday that a massacre in which ten were murdered in Antioquia may have been out of retaliation rather than simply unpaid extortion, he stated on Thursday.
Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon, who revealed the retaliation theory, will travel to the massacre site to head a Security Council to provide safety for the Santa Rosa de Osos citizens where the 10 farm workers were killed Wednesday in cold blood by alleged members of drug trafficking organization the “Rastrojos.”
“It is a barbaric fact that doesn’t have justification,” Pinzon stated.
The Defense Minister explained that the horrific slaughter could also be due to gang clashes or police pressure going on in the area, referencing the capture of one of the “Rostrojos” gang leaders eight day ago as a possible instigator for the murders.
“There are criminal gangs involved in this act, the community should know that we are going to pursue these bands and any organization that wants to infringe against the Constitution, against human rights or the criminal code, that these organizations cannot commit these terrorist acts and keep quiet,” said Pinzon
The previously assumed theory was that the farm owner had not paid an extortion fee to the gang, leading to locking the farm workers in a farm house and throwing a grenade into the locked space and shooting any survivors. The massacre killed 10 workers with one survivor.
A reward was also announced yesterday, offering 27.5 thousand dollars for information leading to the perpetrators of the massacre.
The Defense Minister emphasized that despite the massacre, crime has decreased, “there have been less massacres this year than in the last decade and in recent weeks 63 FARC terrorists have been killed, three of whom were Front or Column ringleaders, we have caught more than 200 guerrillas and 147 have demobilized, which demonstrates the determination of the armed forces to firmly prosecute any criminal.”
