Colombian army accused of ‘extrajudicial killings’

Los Angeles Times

GRANADA, Colombia — Street vendor Israel Rodriguez went fishing last month and never came back. Two days later, his family found his body buried in a plastic bag, classified by the Colombian army as a guerrilla fighter killed in battle.

Human rights activists say the Feb. 17 death is part of a deadly phenomenon called “false positives” by which the armed forces allegedly kills civilians, usually peasants or unemployed youths, and represents them as leftist guerrillas. A macabre facet of a general increase in “extrajudicial killings” by the military, the killings are a result of intense pressure to show results in its U.S.-funded war against leftist insurgents, activists say.

Killings like these have spread terror here in the southeastern state of Meta. Last year the state led Colombia in documented cases of extrajudicial killings, with 287 civilians allegedly killed by the military, according to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a 10 percent increase from 2006.

Colombian officials acknowledge that soldiers and their commanders have been given cash and promotions for upping their units’ body counts.