A Bogotá judge ordered Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella and the Administrative Department of the Presidency to temporarily remove official social media posts showing the president alongside corpses of armed-group members killed in military operations.

In the Sept. 2 images, De la Espriella appears walking among white bags containing at least 23 bodies of people killed in earlier Military Forces operations against FARC dissidents.

In those from Sept. 4, the president appears showing the press four bodies covered with white tarps, the result of a police operation in Riohacha against the Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada, in which Naín Andrés Pérez Toncel, alias Bendito Menor, died.

RELATED: Colombia Aligns Its Foreign Policy With U.S. Security Goals

The Fourteenth Labor Court of the Circuit of Bogotá adopted the measure as a precautionary step in a tutela filed by Chamber Representative Santiago Osorio, who questioned the dissemination of the images over possible harm to fundamental rights, especially those of children and adolescents.

The court established that the posts must be hidden while it studies on the merits whether their content is considered violent or explicit and whether their dissemination violates fundamental rights.

However, the Presidency and the president have two days to exercise their right to defense, so the measure does not constitute a definitive decision on the tutela.

On the other hand, the court also linked to the process Meta Platforms, the Communications Regulation Commission, the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies, and the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare.

The judicial decision became known days after the Ombudsman’s Office publicly questioned the display of the bodies.

“The State and the Government cannot be carried away by a competition to demonstrate who can be more cruel. They cannot dispute with armed groups over who produces more fear, who humiliates the adversary more, or with whom death becomes a demonstration of power,” said Iris Marín, head of the Ombudsman’s Office.

IN THIS ARTICLE