"False positives" scandal

The "false positives" scandal (Spanish: Escándalo de los falsos positivos) was a series of murders in Colombia, part of the armed conflict in that country between the government and guerrilla forces of the FARC and the ELN. Members of the military had poor or mentally impaired civilians lured to remote parts of the country with offers of work, killed them, and presented them to authorities as guerrilleros killed in battle, in an effort to inflate body counts and receive promotions or other benefits. While Colombian investigative agencies find cases as early as 1988 the peak of the phenomenon took place between 2006 and 2009, during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Vélez.^[1]

As of June 2012, a total of 3,350 such cases had been investigated in all parts of the country and verdicts had been reached in 170 cases. Human rights groups have charged that the judicial cases progressed too slowly.^[1] The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in a February 2021 report established the total number of victims to be 6,402 between 2002 and 2008.^[2] An article from "The Guardian" shows a 2018 study claiming a total of 10,000 "false positive" victims between 2002 and 2010.^[3]

The name of the scandal refers to the technical term of "false positive" which describes a test falsely detecting a condition that is not present.

^ ^a ^b Cite error: The named reference lat was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ "La JEP hace pública la estrategia de priorización dentro del Caso 03, conocido como el de falsos positivos". JEP (in Spanish). 2021-02-18. Retrieved 2022-07-13.
^ Daniels, Joe Parkin (2018-05-08). "Colombian army killed thousands more civilians than reported, study claims". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-08-09.

[lat-1] Cite error: The named reference lat was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[2] "La JEP hace pública la estrategia de priorización dentro del Caso 03, conocido como el de falsos positivos". JEP (in Spanish). 2021-02-18. Retrieved 2022-07-13.

[3] Daniels, Joe Parkin (2018-05-08). "Colombian army killed thousands more civilians than reported, study claims". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-08-09.

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