Members of the Colombian army paid US$540 for every man that was
murdered and presented as a ‘positive’, a guerrilla killed in combat,
an army report reveals.
The Comptroller General started investigating where the money paid for the ‘false positives’ came from.
The army report is the result of an internal investigation by the army and was given to Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos. The Minister ordered an investigation after the ‘false positives’ scandal unfolded in October 2008.
The army investigated the death of eleven young men from Soacha, who were found in a mass grave in the north east of Colombia and had been presented as guerrillas killed in combat.
According to the army, its members stopped the creation of ‘false positives’ after the scandal broke.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating more than a thousand possible ‘false positive’ cases.