EXTRAJUDICIAL MURDERS IN COLOMBIA

Army kills soldier's brother

11-14-2008 | AP

US-backed Colombian military officials trade innocent civilian lives for vacations and job promotions

Panama Star BOGOTA, COLOMBIA. The soldiers in Antelope Company's Third Platoon hadn't registered a guerrilla kill in months. And without results, they feared they wouldn't be let off base for Mother's Day.

So they hatched a plan, according to Pvt. Luis Esteban Montes: Lure a civilian to their camp, murder him and register him as a rebel slain in combat.

Montes, 24, didn't object — until he met the quarry.

It was Leonardo, the older brother he hadn't seen since he was 9.

Montes said he tried to dissuade his commander, who responded with threats.

He slipped his brother out of the camp, he says, only to see him show up dead a week later, a "guerrilla kill" with three bullets in his torso and a gaping facial wound likely caused by a knife.

The men of Antelope Company of the 31st Rifle Batallion, 11th Brigade, 7th Division, did not get their "liberty passes."

Montes' family filed a formal complaint, one of 245 complaints involving alleged killings of civilians by Colombian security forces last year that prosecutors are investigating.

It is among the most chilling examples of what the United Nations' top human rights official, Navi Pillay, calls "widespread and systematic" extrajudicial killings by Colombia's U.S.-backed military. Many of the killings were allegedly committed merely to inflate rebel casualty numbers.

Five of Montes' fellow soldiers now face a criminal probe in his brother's April 2007 death, joining some 480 soldiers under investigation for about 1,000 extrajudicial killings during the presidency of Alvaro Uribe.

The scandal comes at a particularly delicate moment for Uribe. President-elect Barack Obama has cited human rights concerns in opposing the U.S.-Colombia trade agreement President Bush wants ratified before he leaves office in January.

Uribe, meanwhile, is cleaning house: A week before Obama's election, he ordered the biggest-ever purge of Colombia's military, firing 20 officers — including three generals and four colonels — for negligence.

On election day, the army commander resigned.

Armed forces chief Gen. Freddy Padilla told The Associated Press that the Montes case contributed to the sacking of the commanding general of the 7th Division, based in Medellin.

Prosecutors say there is no evidence Leonardo was a rebel — or for that matter anything more than a 33-year-old farm worker.

The after-action report said Leonardo was killed in a firefight with a small group of rebels. It said the others got away.

Montes told his story to the Colombian newsmagazine Semana last month.

"Officers get promoted on merit and you win merit by... killing the most subversives. But that's not so easy," Montes said.

"So what happens? They look for the easiest victims."