Eight members of Colombia’s military will serve up to 55 years in military prison for killing two civilians, despite petitions from the victims’ family that the guilty men are incarcerated in a common prison, reported newspaper El Tiempo Monday.
The soldiers from a Santander department military battalion were sentenced Friday for kidnapping and killing two men from a Soacha, on the outskirts of Bogota, in 2008.
The victims’ families made a request that the former soldiers serve their sentence in a regular prison instead of a military prison. Family members argued that locking up the condemned men in a military garrison is “like they’re at home, because they have many benefits and have no restraints.”
The landmark ruling on Friday was the first of many pending “false positive” cases, in which some 2,000 civilians were murdered by members of the armed forces and dressed as militants to make the war against illegal armed groups look more successful.
