The death of a soldier, whose father brought his remains to a Bogota square in protest, was not a case of a “false-positive” according to the prosecutor for the department of Cucuta.
The record noted that, “To what exists in the preliminary completion, it is established that sub-official, Mr. Raul Antonio Carvajal, died in a battle with the guerrilla in the site known as Alto de la Virgen in the municipality of Tibu, Norte de Santander, October 8, 2006,” reported RCN Radio Wednesday.
Raul Carvajal Perez, the father of the deceased soldier, accused his son’s fellow soldiers of killing Carvajal because he would not take part in the murder of two civilians whom the army tried to dress as guerrillas.
The army’s report on the death states that Raul Antonio Carvajal and a fellow soldier, Jose Lopez Ardila, were killed in the midst of “Operation Snake” where members of the army fought suspected members of the Arturo Ruiz mobile column of the FARC.
In February, Carvajal’s father dug up his son’s remains from the northern town of Monteria and brought them to Bogota’s central Bolivar square, a political epicenter in the capital city, to protest his son’s death. The father then remained in the square for almost a month and a half protesting the case.
One main argument in the father’s case is a discrepancy in the two autopsies performed on his son relating to the distance the coroners say the bullet that killed Carvajal was fired.
The regional director of Forensic Medicine in Bogota, Claudia Adriana Garcia, said that “the findings between the first and the second autopsy that we practiced last February 21 were consistent, but unfortunately for the time of death of more than four years, it was difficult to establish the distance of the shot.”
For his part, Carvajal Perez asked the nation’s Prosecutor General, Viviane Morales, to re-open the case with a change of venue. “I am asking for a transfer of this process to Bogota because in Cucuta the case is monopolized, the prosecutor of this city in charge of the case even once told me personally that she had been threatened,” said the father of the dead soldier.
