Live
Audio Only
Six soldiers killed rural worker Cesar Martinez and concealed their crime by simulating evidence.
Colombia's Santa Marta Court upheld a prison sentence against six military personnel for the murder of a farmer whom they passed off as a guerrilla fighter.
RELATED:
The Court dismissed all the elements raised by the defense and ratified the 32-year prison sentence previously approved by a lower court in 2018.
The killing qualified as "an extrajudicial execution" since the defendants shot the civilian Cesar Martinez and concealed the crime by simulating alleged evidence.
"The defendants stated they were attacked by several subjects with gunshots and therefore repelled the action, but there was no ammunition in the alleged combat area," the Sentence reads.
Víctimas de falsos positivos instalaron, una vez más, el mural de "¿Quién dio la orden?" donde fue censurado y borrado por militares la primera vez.
— Colombia2020 (@EEColombia2020) March 6, 2021
��https://t.co/um8mmMqa27 pic.twitter.com/0idrJOsj48
The meme reads, "Relatives of extrajudicial killings victims put the 'Who gave the order?' mural back at the site where the military erased and censored it.".
The soldiers were members of the Infantry Battalion Number 5 'Cordova' and assassinated Martinez on May 18, 2007, in the Chibolo municipality.
A weapon classified as "war material" was found next to the corpse, but it did not present adequate conditions to be used.
Furthermore, the Ballistics Technical Report showed that the victim was shot in the back from a long distance.
Newsletter
