Ex-army commander arrested for ‘false positive’ killings

A former commander of an army anti-kidnapping squad was arrested for his alleged role in the extra-judicial killing of two Colombian citizens in the northern department of Cordoba.

The prosecutor general arrested Antonio Rozo Balbuena for the murder on March 12, 2007 of Fabio Enrique Taborda Avila and another unidentified Colombian.

The prosecution claims to have evidence that the deaths were not the result of a clash between the armed forces and a criminal organization, as the army previously stated.

According to investigators the deaths were premeditated and the aforementioned confrontation was staged, El Espectador reports.

The prosecutor general revealed that Rozo Balbuena is being investigated for seven other extra-judicial killings.

This alleged incidence of “false positives” – where the army presents civilians as criminals killed in combat, to inflate their crime-fighting statistics – is the latest in a series of similar cases.

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