Special court delivered its first sentences against state security forces in Colombia’s decades-long war.Published On 18 Sep 202518 Sep 2025Click here to share on social mediashare2ShareA special Colombian court sentenced 12 former military officers to between five and eight years of reparation work for their involvement in 135 “false positive” deaths – killing civilians and then falsely reporting them as rebel fighters – between the years 2002 and 2005.Thursday’s landmark ruling is the first time the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Colombia’s transitional justice body, issued individual sentences against government security forces for crimes committed in the decades-long war with FARC rebels that ended in 2016.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listFrom 2002 to 2008, there were 6,402 recorded victims of the “false positives,” according to the JEP, but victim groups believe the number to be higher.Officers used the killings, which often targeted poor and disabled young people, to inflate their reputations and earn promotions during the bloody war against rebel groups, which the United States backed under Plan Colombia.The crimes constitute one of eleven “macrocases” being investigated by the JEP, which was set up following the 2016 peace deal to investigate abuses by rebels, paramilitaries, and state security forces. Earlier this week, it introduced its first individual sanctions against FARC leaders.The verdict focuses on one of three subcases within the macrocase, related to crimes committed by the “La Popa” Battalion on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.The case marks a milestone in Colombia, where families of victims have waited decades for justice over the state-sanctioned killings of vulnerable loved ones. Advertisement “We have managed to show the country and the world that these young people were not guerrillas, that they were lured away by deception, murdered, and made to look like guerrillas,” Blanca Nubia Monroy, whose son was a victim of a “false positive” killing, told Al Jazeera.However, she said that reparations work is insufficient punishment, and that the commanders should “pay for what they did t …
