Colombian prosecutors Thursday filed charges against 17 soldiers for
the forced disappearance and murder of eleven young men from Soacha.
Twelve soldiers already had been charged for the same crimes.
According to the prosecution, the soldiers took part in the conspiracy to lure the victims to work a fictive job and then to murder them and present them as guerrillas killed in combat. The soldiers’ defense pleaded not guilty and demand their trial is taken to a military court.
49 soldiers are suspected to be involved in the murder of the eleven victims.
Prosecution investigators found out in 2008 that the men who had been reported as guerrillas killed in combat in the north east of Colombia in fact were men that had been reported missing from Soacha, just south of Colombia’s capital Bogota.
The investigation was the beginning of the ‘false positives’ scandal that implicates some 1,600 members of the military in the murder of civilians to make the war against illegal armed groups look more effective. the prosecution is investigating some 1,200 murders, allegedly committed by members of the security forces.
