Colombian "False-positives"

Alvaro Uribe's war on terrorist organization FARC, led to some ¿undesired? effects:

"A total of 3,822 army officers and foot soldiers have now been accused in a conspiracy to murder civilians and disguise them as guerrillas killed in action. The homicides first came to light in 2008 and since then, more and more cadavers have been dug up.

The body count has now reached an astounding 2,445. The dead include 126 minors.

But what motivated the troops to target these innocent and often impoverished noncombatants, the very people whose hearts and minds the government must win in order to defeat the FARC? A report released this week by the Colombia Inspector General’s office, the entity charged with investigating government abuses, provides some clues.

(...) top military officers were being pushed to show results by then-President Alvaro Uribe, who had vowed to destroy the FARC.

Part of the problem was the army's rewards system. Many soldiers are thought to have participated in the killings because the military rewarded troops for gunning down guerrillas with bonuses, promotions and vacation days." [Globalpost]

"In many cases, vic­tims were recruited from poor neigh­bor­hoods and vil­lages through­out the coun­try, promised work oppor­tu­ni­ties else­where, then drugged and sold to mil­i­tary agents who arranged for their exe­cu­tions. The bod­ies were then dressed up in army fatigues, planted with weapons pur­chased on the black market, and claimed as suc­cess­fully elim­i­nated guer­rilla com­bat­ants by mil­i­tary personnel.

The evi­dence of false pos­i­tive extra­ju­di­cial killings sug­gests their sys­temic nature, a con­clu­sion cor­rob­o­rated by the Coun­cil on Hemi­spheric Affairs" [Guatemala Times]