The State Council has prosecuted the Colombian nation for the 1996 Mondoñedo massacre, in which six supposed guerrillas were tortured and killed. The nation was found materially responsible for the crimes, which were found to be committed by police officers. The State Council ordered the nation to pay the victims’ families a total of $270,600.
The six alleged members of the FARC — the largest rebel group in the country — were thought to be responsible for an attack on the Kennedy Police Station in the capital city of Bogota.
The victims were killed in three separate locations in the state of Cundinamarca in late September 1996 by members of the National Police’s investigative body — the DIJIN, for which six officers were arrested in March 2013. Their bodies were found on a field in the region.
MORE: 6 police officers arrested for 1996 massacre
The killings were investigated together seeing as all the victims – named Vladimir Zambrano Pinzon, Jenner Alfonso Mora Moncaleano, Juan Carlos Palacios Gomez, Arquimedes Moreno Moreno, Federico Quezada and Martin Alonso Valdivieso — were believed to be members of the FARC’s urban Antonio Nariño Front.
The State Council deemed the massacre to be “criminal, illegal, and totally reproachable,” and constituted “some of the most reprehensible and abominable crimes against humanity.”
