Colombia fires 20 army officers over civilian deaths
The dismissals involve the disappearance of youths whose bodies were later identified as rebels killed in combat.
Reporting from Bogota, Colombia — The Colombian Defense Ministry fired 20 army officers Wednesday, including three generals, in connection with the deaths of a dozen youths who allegedly were killed and falsely identified as guerrillas slain in combat.
The firings revolve around the disappearance over the last year of youths from Bogota's Soacha suburb, a sprawling working-class neighborhood rife with crime and unemployment.
Their bodies were later found more than 200 miles northeast of Bogota, the capital, in the state of North Santander and tagged as guerrillas killed in combat. The youths were apparently promised work by shadowy recruiters and then disappeared without a trace, after saying little to their families other than they were taking well-paying jobs.
The case highlights a human rights problem facing the Colombian military called "false positives": the extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians by uniformed troops who then tally them as war dead to gain promotions or time off.
The firings come as President Alvaro Uribe's government is under increasing criticism at home and abroad for not doing enough to stem human rights abuses, including displacements of poor and indigenous people from farmland and killings of union activists.
U.S. critics of Plan Colombia, the American initiative that has funneled more than $5 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia since 2000 to fight drugs and terrorism, have said continuing support should be predicated on the nation improving its human rights record.
In his third presidential debate with Republican nominee John McCain this month, Democratic nominee Barack Obama said that because of such abuses, he opposed a free-trade agreement with Colombia that had been proposed by President Bush.
The Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress has cited labor killings in blocking passage of the trade pact, which McCain and most other GOP congressional members support.
The firings resulted from a three-week investigation by the Defense Ministry and were announced at a Uribe news conference Wednesday. Some of the 20 officers fired are suspected of direct involvement in the killings, while others may have committed "administrative" crimes of omission, officials said.
One of the fired generals, 30th Brigade Cmdr. Paulino Coronado, denied to the Associated Press that he ever ordered his men to kill innocents.
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