Colombia’s war crimes tribunal JEP announced that forensic experts found human remans in a waste dump in the west of Medellin.
The exhumation of at least two victims of forced displacement was celebrated by family members of missing persons who have been urging to search for their loved ones in La Escombrera.
Residents of Medellin’s 13th District began calling for a search in the waste dump in 2002 when testimonies emerged about the dumping of bodies at La Escombrera.
The mayor at the time, Luis Perez, rejected the calls for action, claiming that “Medellin was fixed when Operation Orion happened.”
Operation Orion was a four-day military offensive in the 13th District that expelled leftist militias with the help of the paramilitary force of local crime lord “Don Berna.”
It was Berna’s paramilitary organization, the Bloque Cacique Nutibara, that has been dumping bodies at La Escombrera, according to the locals and at least one demobilized fighter.
The JEP confirmed last week that an estimated 500 people from the 13th District went missing in the first decade of this century.
The family members of these missing persons have been saying that the remains of many of them were dumped at La Escombrera since before Operation Orion.
“We weren’t crazy, we told the truth,” one of these family members, Luz Helena Galeano, told journalists at a press conference last week.
“If past administrations had believed us, if they had not told us that we were crazy and that this was a lie, I believe that we would have achieved many more things,” said Margarita Restrepo, another victim.
If they had listened to us since 2000 and 2001 and believed us, I think it would have been much better. We would have achieved much more and I believe that this is a door to find more bodies. I believe that this is the way to move forward and find many more bodies.
Margarita Restrepo
Local authorities and the company that manages the waste dump have been cooperating with the JEP since 2019 when the war crimes tribunal ordered them to stop dumping waste on top of what is widely believed Colombia’s largest mass grave.