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Colombia Fires 27 From Army Over Killings
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Michael Shifter, a senior analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue policy group in Washington, said Colombia took the steps, in part, to further its chances of winning Democratic approval for a free trade agreement after the Nov. 4 elections.
"There's been mounting pressure, not just internationally but domestically," Shifter said. "Unless Uribe really tackles it seriously, it would be impossible to get the trade deal through."
Bayron Góngora, an attorney for seven families that have reported the deaths of relatives in circumstances similar to those in Soacha, said that "extrajudicial executions" are neither new nor limited to a few military units.
"It became impossible for the government to keep covering this up," he said by telephone from the city of Medellin.
An official in the attorney general's office said by telephone from Bogota that investigators are handling 550 cases involving as many as 1,000 victims. The killers, he said, come from all branches of the armed services, including police, navy and army.
Lisa Haugaard, director of the Latin America Working Group, a Washington-based coalition of humanitarian groups, said that Colombian human rights groups had recently found allegations of extrajudicial killings in 27 of Colombia's 32 states and reported that the rate of killings rose in 2007. She noted that the army has begun training to stem such abuses but that more needs to be done.
The Soacha killings surfaced publicly after a local official there, Fernando Escobar, began receiving complaints from families who went to the authorities after their sons went missing.
On Wednesday, he and the families were launching a campaign to raise public awareness of the problem when he heard the news about the army purge. He said the victims never had a chance.
"They were looking for opportunity," he said, "and instead they found this horrible end."
