“Today I want the world to know that they were farmers,” said Néstor Guillermo Gutiérrez, a former corporal in the Colombian army, of his victims, “that I cowardly killed them as a member of the army, that I used their belongings stole children’s dreams, I ripped out their mother’s hearts, under pressure, to produce results, to produce false results, to make a government happy. It is not right.”
The court’s magistrates believe that their victims represent only a small fraction of those killed during Álvaro Uribe’s presidency between 2002 and 2008, as part of the false positive strategy. In all, the court said in a recent investigative report that the military is responsible for killing 6,402 civilians and claims they were rebels.
For years, many Colombians have demanded to know who was the highest-ranking person with knowledge of the scheme, who was the highest-ranking person to orchestrate it, and why Mr. Uribe didn’t stop it.
Human rights organizations and the United Nations Human Rights Agency had already raised the alarm about suspicious deaths in 2005.
The hearing did not answer who was ultimately responsible for the strategy. General Coronado is the top official admitting responsibility in the case of false positives, but his confession focused on his failure to supervise others.
“I didn’t follow the first lesson they taught me when I went to military school: the commander is responsible for what his subordinates do and don’t do,” he said in court. “I accept my responsibility to have served as a hierarchical superior.”
The hearings also revealed a level of institutional coordination designed to cover up the truth.
“We stayed up all night creating documentation, changing documentation, and even deleting documentation,” said Juan Carlos Chaparro, a retired major. “And always, after it was all over, sullying the name of their relatives, calling them what they really weren’t.”
