Army commander to serve 23 years for ‘false positive’ murder .

[Judi Lynn]

Army commander to serve 23 years for ‘false positive’ murder
Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:24 Sarah Cast

A retired Colombian Army lieutenant colonel was sentenced to 23 years and three months in prison Thursday for the extrajudicial execution of a farmer in north Colombia whose death was reported as a combat kill.

The Second Criminal Court of Sincelejo declared Lieutenant Colonel Luis Fernando Borja Aristizabal responsible for the death of a civilian who was presented as a guerilla killed in combat.

Borja Aristizabal was convicted of aggravated murder and falsifying a public document.

The victim, Angel Gabriel Berrio Vides, was executed on Feburary 17, 2008 in the village of La Ventura in the northern Colombian department of Sucre.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/18570-army-commander-to-serve-23-years-for-false-positive-killing.html

What a hero, murdering an unarmed farmer, busy trying to support his family.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Yeah, but what about those who made the policy of rewarding soldiers

with bonuses and promotions on a "body count" basis? And how did the Colombian government and military become "Murder, Inc.," funded by $7 BILLION from the Bushwhacks? (--rhetorical question). Thousands of murders have gone unsolved--including many other "false positives," and the murders of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, Indigenous leaders, political leftists and others. I'm glad to see one "false positive" solved and punished. What about all the other murders and leaders who encouraged them, here and Colombia?

[Necronomiconomics]

2. Haven't heard about all the Falso Positivo murders in Latin "socialist" countries.

Imagine if this had happened just once in Venezuela or Bolivia or Ecuador.

[gbscar]

3. All those countries are relatively peaceful and have been so for some time.

Despite having certain moments of internal crisis, none of them have had to deal with ongoing armed conflicts for the past few decades, even before their current administrations rose to power. In other words, their recent "socialism" isn't exactly what has made them avoid conflicts that fuel and permit such abuses.

I would even argue that leftist governments may help prevent their situations from deteriorating further, by promoting social equality and reducing poverty, but that's a long term benefit. It doesn't fully explain how their currently peaceful status quo came to exist in the first place.

What's more, the suggestion that they have completely avoided this is also technically incorrect. Evidently nothing has happened on a remotely similar scale or under the exact same conditions, of course, but you can certainly dig up both historical and occasionally contemporary cases or extra-judicial executions or forced disappearances carried out by their army and police forces, including circumstances where the victims may have been falsely accused of being criminals. Logically enough, most of them would date back to the time when those countries had some active armed insurgencies, which provide a lot of fodder for military brutality, but even today they aren't perfectly peaceful.

Once again, none of those situations have ever reached the shameful numbers seen in Colombia, which is something we must all be thankful for, but the differences in context certainly run much deeper than the simple existence of progressive governments during the past decade.