Extrajudicial killings mar new Colombia presidency

[Judi Lynn]

Extrajudicial killings mar new Colombia presidency
Published on 5 August 2010 - 2:01am

Juan Manuel Santos will inherit Colombia's "false-positive" scandal of grisly army killings when he takes over the presidency this Saturday.

The scandal, in which the army presented civilians as guerrillas or paramilitaries who had died in combat, overlapped some of the period when Santos was defense minister, from 2006-2009.

The victims are now believed to be in their thousands.

Details first emerged at the end of 2008 after the disappearance of 14 young civilians in Soacha, near Bogota, whom the army falsely reported as combat deaths in the northeast of the country.

More:
http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/extrajudicial-killings-mar-new-colombia-presidency