Colombia: Police accused of killing three youths and posing as ‘drug dealers’

Disturbance prevails in Colombiaas a total of 11 police officers -one of whom is a colonel-, are accused of murdering three young men and then trying to pose as “drug dealers” to cover up their crime.

According to Agence France-Presse, the 11 police officers are accused that on July 25, in a city in the province of Sucre, they killed three young people aged 18, 22 and 26. They had been stopped for a traffic control and a few hours later their bodies were taken to a local hospital. Their bodies bore bullet wounds and signs of torture, according to their families and their lawyer.

Photos from their arrest, posted on social networking sites at the time, showed the three young men alive in a street surrounded by police. One was standing, the second was kneeling and the third was lying down.

According to the new police chief, General Henry Sanabria, the accused officers “violated all constitutional and legal parameters, tarnishing the institution” of the police.

Ten have been arrested while the eleventh, Colonel Benjamin Núñez, the police commander of the entire province of Sucre, is on the run. According to prosecutors, Nunes shot the victims himself. Colombian media reported that he has fled to Mexico and Interpol’s help has been sought in his arrest.

The accused police officers claimed that the victims killed a colleague in a neighboring village and that they were members of the Clan del Golfo, Colombia’s largest criminal organization that is waging an open war against the security forces.

The death of the three youths evoked memories of the scandal of the early 2000s: at that time, more than 6,000 civilians were arrested and executed by the army, which then presented them as “rebels killed in action”.