Demobilized members of now-defunct paramilitary organization AUC admitted to kidnapping a civilian, who was later killed by soldiers and reported as a guerrilla killed in combat.
According to “Voces del Secuestro,” a Caracol radio show dedicated to kidnapping, two then members of the AUC on August 2, 2004 kidnapped a bus driver’s assistant on the road from Medellin to Abejorral.
That same evening, army troops reported that a “John Doe” was killed in combat in Bello, just south of the capital of Antioquia.
It wasn’t until July 2008 that the body was identified as that of the bus worker.
The paramilitaries’ testimony is one of several that indicate the army worked together with right-wing paramilitary death squads to inflate the number of killed guerrillas and successes made in the government’s war against leftist rebel groups like the FARC and ELN.
