Paramilitaries allegedly feed crocodiles, tigers and lions with the bodies of their victims, newspaper El Heraldo reported Monday.
Several families of assassinated people whose bodies never showed up
reported in front of the prosecution that the corpses would have been
fed to wild animals. The recent discovery of a lion abandoned in the home of paramilitary and drug trafficker Carlos Mario Jimenez alias ‘Macaco’ supports this theory.
Consulted by El Heraldo, the Prosecutor General’s Office did not rule out the possibility the seized lion actually ate human flesh.
In 2005 authorities seized a farm of paramilitary leader Rodrigo Mercado Peluffo alias ‘Cadena’ and found 72 graves with the remains of hundreds of killed peasants. ‘Cadena’ also had a six-meter long alligator on his farm that, according to witnesses, would have eaten an unknown number of people, “dead and alive.”
But paramilitaries not only use wild animals to get rid of bodies but also to kill people. Paramilitary Jose Gregorio Mangones Lugo alias ‘Carlos Tijeras’ confessed he used rattlesnakes, one of the most poisonous in the world, to kill peasants. This way the deaths look like accidents and not like murders which prevents official investigations.
The testimonies have not been verified but are under investigation.