A Colombian army colonel has been accused of murdering civilians and stealing corpses to simulate the successful killing of a leading neo-paramilitary.
Colombia’s Prosecutor General says Colonel Oscar Orlando Gomez Cifuentes simulated a confrontation in November 2007 to falsely claim he had killed Dumar de Jesus Guerrero, alias “Carecuchillo,” the brother of Pedro Oliverio Guerrero, alias “Cuchillo,” leader of ERPAC and one of Colombia’s most wanted drug lords.
According the investigation, the colonel ordered the digging up of two bodies from a cemetery in Cumaribo, in the western department of Vichada, and the killing of three other people, apparently street-dwellers. He then had them dressed as ERPAC militants and claimed Carecuchillo was one of those killed.
Carecuchillo, who was accused of taking part in the 1997 Mapiripan massacre in his former role as a senior AUC member, surrendered to the authorities the following year and is now in jail.
Carecuchillo news archive
A soldier who worked under Gomez Cifuentes between 2006 and 2008 has claimed the colonel took millions of dollars from Cuchillo in return for letting ERPAC traffic drugs without interference.
The authorities now suspect that everything the colonel claims to have happened regarding Cuchillo was staged. The drug lord was ultimately killed in a shoot-out with police in central Colombia in 2010.