A human rights prosecutor has requested a 60-year sentence for an Army lieutenant who allegedly murdered three children, raping one of them, newspaper El Espectador reported Tuesday.
Lieutenant Raul Muñoz Linares has been charged with aggravated murder, violent sexual intercourse and carnal abuse of a minor under the age of 14 years.
There is enough evidence against Muñoz Linares to convict him of all three charges, said Prosecutor Victor Julio Lozano, requesting that he receive the maximum sentence of 60 years in prison.
The Child and Adolescent Code ensures that Muñoz Linares, if convicted, will serve the maximum sentence without any possibility of reducing the penalty.
Yenni Torres Jaimes (14) and her two younger brothers, Jimmy Ferney (9) and Jefferson Yovani (6), disappeared on October 14, 2010 in the municipality of Tame in the northern Colombian department of Arauca.
Their tortured bodies were discovered four days later less than 300 feet from an Army base. Sixty members of the Armed Forces were subsequently investigated.
Muñoz Linares was detained in late October for the murders. The lieutenant confessed to raping the female sibling, along with another girl, but maintains that he did not kill the children.
Seven Army officers were suspended for failing to control the men in their command.