(Bogotá) A Colombian organization has discovered “multiple” human remains in a place near the border with Venezuela after a report made by a former far-right paramilitary leader, a Colombian court announced on Wednesday.
The Missing Persons Search Unit (UBPD) located the bodies in the municipality of Juan Frio (northeast), less than a kilometer from Venezuela, on the indications of the Colombo-Italian Salvatore Mancuso, whose militias have surrendered in 2006 and is serving a 15-year, eight-month prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.
Agents went to the site “and found that there were indeed many (human) remains there”, Roberto Vidal, president of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), told Blu Radio station. , a tribunal responsible for judging the most serious crimes of the conflict in Colombia.
“With this preliminary information, they will begin a thorough investigation to […] try to identify the bodies,” added Vidal, whose jurisdiction was created following the 2016 peace accord with the FARC guerrillas, as was the UBPD.
Mr. Vidal did not specify how many bodies were discovered in Juan Frio, indicating only the presence of “multiple human remains”.
Salvatore Mancuso laid down his arms in 2006 as part of a peace agreement with former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010), then was handed over to American authorities.
Imprisoned in the US state of Georgia, he asked in May for help to find the bodies of more than 200 people buried by his armed group in Venezuela.
According to Mr. Vidal, the former leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a grouping of paramilitary groups determined to curb the advance of the guerrillas, has already indicated “some (geographical) coordinates on the other side of the border”. where bodies could be found.
The UBPD estimates that some 100,000 people have been victims of enforced disappearances during the armed conflict that has ravaged Colombia for six decades.
The AUC sowed terror and persecuted thousands of inhabitants, the vast majority of peasants and political activists, without them having the slightest link with the guerrillas.