Colombia, rebels reach deal to search for thousands missing in war

The Colombian government and leftist FARC rebels have agreed to two measures they say will help find tens of thousands of people who have disappeared during 50 years of war, as the two sides take the final steps toward a peace deal.

The agreement, reached late Saturday, addresses a key issue at the negotiations, which reached a major breakthrough in September when then two sides vowed to sign a deal by March.

Colombia's attorney general estimates 52,000 people have disappeared during Latin America's longest war, which has killed some 220,000 people and displaced millions. Victim groups say between 70,000 and 100,000 people may have gone missing.

The two sides agreed to create a "specialized unit to search for people who are considered disappeared," according to a joint statement. The unit, separate from judicial investigations, will provide families with official reports on information obtained about their missing family members.

"These steps are transcendental, but, I repeat, they are just first steps," lead government negotiator Humberto de la Calle said on Sunday. "What was agreed yesterday looks to alleviate this pain - the profound pain of the families of the disappeared."

The government and rebels will also furnish the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with information about the missing, so the charity can help design search plans.

"We will put all our experience toward supporting relatives, exhuming mortal remains in areas where the government cannot do it and by consulting with responsible institutions," Christoph Harnisch, head of the ICRC's delegation in Colombia said in a statement.

The agreement was "another step for peace" President Juan Manuel Santos, who has staked his legacy on successfully reaching a deal, said on Twitter.

Some captured and demobilized former rebels have already cooperated with authorities to locate remains in exchange for lighter sentences, a task complicated by the rural jungle or mountain locations of many unmarked graves.

Human rights advocates and families of the disappeared have warned that unless more bodies are located, exhumed, identified and returned to their families, Colombia risks handicapping its post-conflict development.

Forensic investigators in the Andean country often struggle with large case loads and lack of training, funding and equipment.

The government and FARC have been in peace talks in Havana for nearly three years. They recently set a deadline of March 23 to reach a final agreement, which would then be put before Colombian voters for ratification.



Monday 19 October 2015

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/colombia-rebels-reach/2201818.html

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Where are the bodies buried in Colombia?

When members of Colombia’s Crime Scene Investigators (CTI) removed a section of topsoil indicated to them by a demobilized paramilitary member as being the site of a mass grave, they were expecting to unearth skulls, bones and fragments of clothing. Instead what they came face to face with were multiple round holes of medium depths.

“What happened here? Did you bury them standing up?” asked one CTI officer.

Far from it. The bodies of the deceased had been hacked into pieces and placed in tall milk urns and doused in acid. Once the human contents had dissolved and become liquid, the urns were then disinterred and their contents poured into the nearby Magdalena River. No trace no foul and another reminder of how far Colombia has yet to go to reconcile an uncompromising and bloody past. In this particular case, the number of people to have been killed in this fashion near to the colonial town of Guaduas, barely 77 miles northwest from the capital city of Bogota, is based on hazy recollections gathered from former combatants in Colombia’s conflict looking to reduce their sentences through an admission of guilt in participation in such heinous events. Sadly, these tales are the norm rather than unique.

That was in 2010 and as the Colombian government’s negotiating team grapples with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC guerrillas) in on-going peace dialogues in Havana, Cuba in an attempt to bring stability to much of the country, there is still the issue of thousands of missing people, many forcibly disappeared, resulting from more than 50 years of conflict. So, exactly how many people have disappeared in Colombia’s long-running conflict and where have they been disposed of? While the answer to this question in unknown, human rights groups estimate there to be 4,649 common graves across the country.

Through tearful eyes Margarita Restrepo shares with reporters that not a day passes when she doesn’t think of her daughter Carol who disappeared in Medellin in October 2002. 13 years is a long time and Margarita is just one of a group of family members here on the location of a former landfill known as La Escombrera at the westernmost edge of the city and above the infamous Comuna 13 barrio. There has been a ceremony of remembrance and on Monday July 27 authorities began an excavation which will reportedly take five months, in the hope of finding and identifying as many as 100 bodies expected to have been buried here between 1999 and 2004 when paramilitary groups took control of this strategically located district.

Unmarked graves, mass graves and common graves abound in Colombia. The puzzle is finding those who know their whereabouts and who they contain. There’s a discrepancy in numbers as victims’ groups such as Asfaddes Medellín, Movice, Familiares Colombia and las Madres de la Candelaria which all believe there to be as many as 45,000 forcibly disappeared people across Colombia in contrast to the government’s figures of 15,000. Families seeking the whereabouts of loved ones also consider la Escombrera to be of significance in that it could hold the answers to an estimated 300 missing individuals and therefore garland Medellin with the unwelcome fame of being home to the world’s largest urban mass grave.

“They will find some things, but not the quantities that they are suggesting,” said a criminologist knowledgeable in the city and who preferred to remain anonymous in an exclusive interview. “This search is a sophism to create a distraction as the Comuna 13 has become something of a myth,” he continued.

So what is the myth surrounding Medellin’s Comuna 13, a district once routinely believed to be amongst the worst in Colombia’s second city due to gang warfare and drugs? Perhaps the answer is precisely that it has gained its notoriety for being the principal Comuna—of Medellin’s 16 Comunas—which was targeted by former President Alvaro Uribe as the one which required military intervention to pacify it. Thus, the infamous Operation Orion in 2002 was carried out and it is known that the military sent in right wing paramilitary groups first and then followed them up with an all-out assault to wrest this district from the control of leftwing guerrillas such as the FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN rebels).

Certainly, this scarred hillside which for so long was a dumping ground for construction materials, household waste and even chemicals, will hold its fair share of secrets, as after Operation Orion, Comuna 13 was run by a ruthlessly savage paramilitary group known as the Bloque Cacique Nutibara under the leadership of alias “Don Berna” or Diego Murillo who was later extradited to the US in 2008 for drug trafficking and money laundering.

The excavations are not without their challenges, requiring digs to 8m in depth and which will focus on three points based on testimonies. To begin with, teams will have to move 24,000m3 of rubble and earth with heavy machinery for a period of two months before even studying the debris.

“No one can really know what they will find and what the state of preservation of the remains will be unless they attempt to excavate and recover the remains. Paleontology and Archaeology teach us that human remains (in particular bones) can survive at great depths, for hundreds of thousands of years, and that sometimes even soft tissue and clothing survive, and DNA can also be extracted. I would like to reiterate that the preservation will depend on the type of soil and whatever was dumped on the remains,” said Dr Karina Gerdau Radonic, Lecturer in Biological Anthropology at the UK’s Bournemouth University.

This situation is hardly unique to Medellin. La Escombrera itself has been visited on no less than four occasions by experts from the Attorney General’s Office since 2004 and as yet nothing of use has been uncovered. Then there are the environmental and geographical elements to consider. Colombia is home to various mountain ranges, is tectonically unstable and at the mercy of landslides, floods and heavy rainfalls across much of the country. There’s the very real fear that many remains will have shifted position from their original burial sites or have been lost altogether.

But, it’s a start down the road which hopefully can lead to closure for families and perhaps reconciliation in Colombia. While members of the leftist FARC guerrillas, involved in the peace dialogues since November 2012, have expressed their solidarity with the victims of the paramilitary killings believed to be in la Escombrera, the rebel group will be forced to recognize those disappearances carried out by members of their own.

It’s a grim reality in today’s Colombia. Killings by illegal groups in the Pacific city of Buenaventura in so-called “casas de pique” or “chop houses”, where the dismemberments of opponents occur, continue as the struggle for control of this strategic port heightens. Body parts are then bagged up weighed down with rocks and tossed out to sea. Where will forensic investigators need to look next? Grave sites attributed to the rise in gangs born from the shells of former paramilitary outfits, have been found in neighboring Venezuela as well. Nowhere, it appears, is exempt from this scourge.

The Attorney General’s website warns that some contents of their pages could be sensitive and may not be apt for minors. Here one can conduct a search through a macabre database showing items of clothing retrieved from common graves and posted online in the hope that a family comes forward to identify the missing person last seen dressed in these items. Another page offers up facial reconstruction renders, there are 64 images from the southern coca-growing department of Putumayo alone.

So, will this excavation at La Escombrera encourage further investigations around Colombia or will it lead up a blind alley and discourage the authorities from pursuing further cases? It’s hard to say. And are demobilized guerrillas or paramilitaries providing the authorities with accurate locations or leading investigators on a ruse? Unsubstantiated rumors abound that a stretch of land near to Medellin known as the Curva de Rodas was another infamous place used by gangs as a disposal area. What is not covered by new-build apartment blocks is a delicately landscaped park. In Bogota, after the military stormed the Palacio de Justicia in November 1985 in response to the siege by M19 guerrillas; those killed in the attack were supposedly unceremoniously dumped in an unused lot near to the Central Cemetery and in a more humble district of the south known as Matatigres.

Unmarked graves, mass graves and common graves abound in Colombia. The puzzle is finding those who know their whereabouts and who they contain. This is clearly easier said than done.

As the Criminologist said: “These groups are organized, the idea is to leave no evidence and no witnesses.”

It is clear that La Escombrera is just a start as thousands of Colombian families yearn for closure in a process which could easily take decades.

Sunday 2 August 2015

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/02/where-are-the-bodies-buried-in-colombia.html

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As peace talks advance, Colombia struggles to find its missing

"I know the grave was here," says the ex-combatant, Andres Martinez, wiping his brow as a forensic expert starts in with a shovel near the rural town of Chaguani.

Though it's only mid-morning, the motley team of forensic staff, prison guards and ex-rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have already dug one trench in heavy rain, hoping to find the bones of a victim of the 50-year conflict.

The missing man, who the FARC says was a member of a rival group shot in battle, is one of at least 52,000 Colombians who have disappeared during a long war between Marxist rebels, government troops and right-wing paramilitaries.

Most were killed and buried in unmarked graves across the country.

As the government wades through complex peace talks with the FARC, rights advocates and families of the disappeared hope the rebels will reveal grave locations as part of a deal for them to avoid long prison terms and be allowed to enter politics.

Victims' groups warn that unless more bodies are exhumed, identified and returned to their families, Colombia risks handicapping its post-conflict development.

"The past is going to haunt them," said Christoph Harnisch, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross's (ICRC) office in Colombia.

An estimated 220,000 people have been killed in the war.

The violence, and the unknown fate of so many missing people, has stalled Colombia's development. The government is hoping for a peace deal this year and says its could add 2 percentage points to annual growth, but that would be at risk if implementation goes badly.

Even with an easing of the conflict over the last decade, work inside Congress is often stalled as lawmakers dissect each others' links to different armed groups.

Experts say the challenge facing Colombia could be even greater than in Argentina, Chile and Guatemala - where the disappeared of late-20th century conflicts were largely victims of the government - because so many armed groups are involved, complicating efforts to collect information.

Handcuffed to a prison officer, the ex-FARC fighter Martinez, who will serve just eight years in prison in exchange for information about bodies, points to where he thinks the grave is.

"Length-wise, this way."

"Is the body dismembered or whole?" excavation official Hugo Villalobos asks.

"Whole."

Apart from locating graves, usually in remote jungle or mountain terrain, the biggest obstacles to identification are investigators' lack of training, funding and equipment.

The workload will balloon if a peace deal is signed.

"Obviously it would mean an increase - an exponential increase," says Alvaro Polo, head of excavations for the attorney general's office in Bogota, where forensic staff pore over skeletons in their morgue. He says his team would need to double in size from roughly 70 now.

The ICRC calculates that nearly 70,000 people remain unaccounted for, more than the government's estimate, though some disappearances may be unrelated to the war.

The numbers are high even by the standards of Latin American conflicts. In Guatemala's brutal civil war, up to 45,000 people went missing. About 30,000 "disappeared" under military rule in Argentina, while 3,000 went missing during Chile's dictatorship.

UNIDENTIFIED BODIES

"Until we have bones, something we can say goodbye to, he's still alive," said Marcela Granados, 28, cradling a photo of her father Jose, who was taken by paramilitaries from their ranch in northeast Colombia in 2003.

Despite testimony from a neighbor, who saw him beaten, and the capture of one perpetrator, his remains were never found.

Polo's unit has excavated 6,000 bodies since 2007, more than 10 percent of the government's missing count.

Nearly half of the remains have been returned to families, but another 3,000 bodies lie unidentified in morgues.

Some have preliminary identifications, based on witness testimony or other evidence, but the majority are "pure unidentifieds" - meaning investigators have zero leads.

Victims mostly come from poor, isolated rural families who lack decent communication, hobbling efforts to get DNA samples to match with bodies that have been found.

Rights groups say investigators rely too much on testimony from ex-fighters and fail to use other techniques: interviews with communities, records of armed groups' movements or satellites and radar.

Stefan Schmitt, a German forensic expert who has met with Colombian officials, said Colombia should compile a definitive database of the disappeared because once "flashy exhumations" finish the unidentified stop being prioritized.

"You end up with warehouses full of remains," he said.

Finding the disappeared is easier said than done.

Staff often carry equipment for hours through inhospitable terrain to reach sites and few are certified to use technologies like ground-penetrating radar, said Polo.

Excavations in dangerous areas require army protection or helicopter transport. Captured insurgents sometimes withdraw testimony following threats, canceling exhumations.

Even when digs do occur, they fail to turn up remains at least half the time.

"Peace will bring something big," said forensic anthropologist Maria Alejandra Marino, packing up her equipment after eight hours work at the Chaguani excavation, where no remains were found.

Wednesday 29 July 2015

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKCN0Q228820150728?sp=true

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Colombia searches dozens of bodies at Medellin landfill site

Forensic experts in Colombia have begun a search for dozens of bodies at a landfill site believed to be one of the largest urban mass graves in the world.

Relatives of possible victims held a ceremony at the site on the outskirts of the city of Medellin before the excavation started.

The bodies of 90 to 300 people are thought to be buried there.

The disappearances date from 2002, when the army launched an operation against left-wing rebels in the area.

The operation was ordered by Colombia's president at the time, Alvaro Uribe.

Right-wing paramilitaries filled the void when the rebels left the Comuna 13 shantytown area and they are blamed by many for most of the killings.

Criminal gangs are also accused of involvement in some of the disappearances.

Medellin was once considered one of the world's most violent cities.

It was the home of the Medellin Cartel, the drug-trafficking organisation led by Pablo Escobar, who was killed in 1993.

Some 20,000 tonnes of earth will be removed over the next five months in the search for the bodies, reports the BBC's Natalio Cosoy in Bogota. 'Drop of hope'

A ceremony at the site, including a religious service, marked the beginning of the excavation.

"It took us 13 years to get here. This is a drop of hope," said Luz Elena Galeano, leader of an organisation of women fighting for justice for their missing relatives.

Relatives laid flowers and images of their loved ones on the site.

"The ceremony was moving and a commitment to peace and reconciliation," said Colombia's Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo.

More than 200,000 people have been killed since hostilities between the army and Colombia's main rebel group, the Farc, began in 1964.

Both sides have been engaged in nearly three years of peace negotiations, which are being held in Cuba.

Earlier this month, the Colombian government announced a de-escalation of attacks against the rebels, who had announced a unilateral ceasefire.

The talks are aimed at ending hostilities, which would lead to the Farc giving up its armed struggle to join the legal political process.

Tuesday 28 July 2015

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-33684670

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Colombia to begin large-scale excavation of mass grave

Colombian officials will soon begin exhumation of a mass grave that could prove to be the largest in the country's history, authorities said Friday.

The grisly work of unearthing the mass grave in Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city, will begin on July 27 and will likely take months to complete. The bodies are believed to be the result of years of fighting among right-wing paramilitaries, leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers.

Workers could discover more than 100 bodies, according to national prosecutor's office spokeswoman Caterina Heyck, though it's hard to know in advance what they will find.

She said it could be "the largest" judicial exhumation in Colombia's history. Officials received information on the mass burial site from demobilized paramilitary fighters.

The country's five-decade long civil war has left the landscape pockmarked with unmarked grave. In recent years, officials have exhumed thousands of bodies and attempted to return the remains to family members. Workers use DNA to match bodies with people reported missing.

The government has been negotiating with the guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in Havana for two and a half years to end the conflict.

Saturday 18 July 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/07/17/world/americas/ap-lt-colombia-exhumation.html?_r=0

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More than five thousand bodies found in Colombian mass graves

Groups of experts were able to find until today four thousand 332 mass graves in Colombia, in sites where more than five thousand bodies were exhumed during the past six years, the general attorney Eduardo Montealegre confirmed.

These efforts are part of the missing persons search mechanisms, implemented by the research body to clarify crimes that have occurred in the context of the armed conflict.

The research body also seeks to return the victims bodies to their families, the official said. According to estimates, some 45,000 Colombian were target of the phenomenon known as enforced disappearance during the confrontation, which has lasted more than 50 years.

The general victim´s figure is around 6.8 millions, mostly of them were displaced from their places of origin because of the violence.

Friday 10 July 2015

http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3969341&Itemid=1

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Nearly 6,000 bodies found in Colombia's mass graves

A total of 5,782 bodies have been found in 4,496 mass graves in several regions of Colombia over the past nine years, according to a joint report by the country's National Transitional Justice Unit and the Attorney General.

Among the bodies listed in the document, 4,527 of those killed are likely victims of paramilitary groups. The department of Antioquia, where former President Alvaro Uribe was governor, had the most exhumations with 992 cases, followed by Magdalena with 657, Meta with 494 and Putumayo with 472.

A significant number of those dug up are likely victims of enforced disappearance, and most of the graves were discovered in areas once controlled by the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), the country’s largest paramilitary group.

In 2003, former President Uribe signed a peace deal with the AUC, however other paramilitary groups remain active and control a significant portion of drug trafficking in the country.

The last three years have seen the government of Juan Manuel Santos pass laws relating to the right of victims and land restitution, as well paying reparations to victims of forced disappearances.

Authorities and forensic specialists are currently working in the department of Nariño to dig up the remains of 60 people killed by paramilitary groups over the past decade.

Saturday 14 February 2015

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Nearly-6000-Bodies-Found-in-Colombias-Mass-Graves-20150213-0028.html

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Granada - the Colombian town determined to break with its bloody past

Thirteen years ago, the town of Granada in Colombia’s northwestern Antioquia province and its surrounding rural areas were at the epicentre of Colombia’s war. Here, right-wing paramilitary groups and rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fought for territorial control and inflicted a reign of terror on civilians living in this farming region of rolling green hills.

By 2002, warring factions had forced 70 percent of Granada’s population of 20,000 inhabitants to flee their homes. Surrounding rural areas became ghost villages. Today, abandoned homes choked with weeds line the windy road leading to Granada, testimony to the thousands of families who fled.

Colombia’s armed conflict, concentrated in the country’s southern provinces and border areas, continues. But in Granada the fighting is largely over after a 2004 government military offensive pushed rebels into more remote hideouts.

As the security situation improves, displaced families are slowly trickling back to Granada to rebuild their lives. Over the past six months, 700 displaced people, who found refuge in nearby cities, have returned to Granada. They are given local government subsidies for farming and to help rebuild their homes.

It will take at least three years for coffee, fruit and vegetable farms to be fully up and running again. Today, there are around 10,000 people living in Granada, half of the town’s population at its height in 1998.



Granada’s residents have vowed not to forget the town’s tragic past. Next to a church in the town square is a small museum, known as the “Room of Never Again.” It serves as a memorial to Granada’s victims and is the first of its kind in Colombia.

On one entire wall there are 182 photos of Granada’s dead and missing, posted by families of the victims. Photos of boys, some as young as 12, a nun and the town’s mayor sit alongside pictures of community leaders and farmers. From 1998 to 2008, 400 people in Granada were killed by both warring factions and 128 locals went missing. Around 200 children lost either one or both parents in this town alone.

Granada was attacked 10 times by the two main sides of Colombia’s conflict – the FARC rebels and the paramilitaries. In one of the worst attacks in late 2000, over 300 FARC fighters invaded Granada during an 18-hour siege and placed a car bomb outside the town’s police station, killing 17 civilians and 6 policemen.

“We want to raise awareness about Granada’s victims. We only recently started talking about our pain and it’s brought us closer together as a community because you realise you’re not the only one suffering. It’s important to remember what happened here so history doesn’t repeat itself. School children from other parts of Colombia visit the memorial and they have no idea about what Granada suffered,” says Gloria Ramirez, who heads Granada’s victims’ association and who helped set up the memorial in 2007.

Granada’s residents have made a concerted effort to honour and remember the town’s victims, which locals say is crucial for lasting peace.

In a small square, scores of painted stones bear the names of those who went missing between 1998 and 2008. In total, 128 people disappeared at the hands of both warring factions. Locals say their bodies were most likely thrown into the nearby river or into mass graves. In 2008, state forensic experts dug up the bodies of eight people who had gone missing in the rural areas surrounding Granada. Over the next few years, it’s likely dozens more bodies will be exhumed.

Granada’s stone memorial and its museum are just some of the ways in which Granada’s residents are helping each other to deal with their grief. They have set up a weekly ‘hug group’ were families of victims can come together and talk, along with a ritual known as the ‘sale of bad memories’.

“Once we had a sale of bad memories in a market stall. You could come and write down your memory and someone would buy it symbolically with a sweet and chocolates,” said Ramirez.

Monday 18 March 2013

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/blogs/alertnet-news-blog/photo-blog-granada-the-colombian-town-determined-to-break-with-its-bloody-past

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Colombia authorities uncover mass grave

Colombian authorities have uncovered the bodies of five men buried in a field in a remote part of Antioquia department, and the country's largest rebel group, FARC, are the intitial suspects, local media reported on Tuesday.

The bodies, in an advanced state of composition, were allegedy found on Monday buried in a field in the village of La Bamba, two hours from the town of El Bagre, in Colombia's north-west Antioquia department. They were in an advanced stage of decomposition and had not been buried with any identifying documents.

According to national police commander General Jose David Guzman, the five men appear to have been members of the paramilitary gang "Los Urabeños" who had, along with five other men, arrived from the port city of Cartagena two months prior, reported El Universal.

The men, reportedly of African descent, were allegedly kidnapped by the FARC on December 30 2012, and had not been seen since.

It is not yet known how long the bodies were buried for.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/28118-colombia-authorities-uncover-mass-grave.html

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Authorities find 22 corpses in central Colombia mass grave

Authorities said Sunday they have found a mass grave in central Colombia containing 22 remains of presumed members of neo-paramilitary organization "Los Urabeños."

The mass grave was found in Tauramena, a municipality in the Casanare department.

According to officials of the Prosecutor General's Office, the bodies may be of members of the paramilitary group "Bloque Centauros" who died in 2004 while clashing with members of the now-defunct paramilitary group of Hector Buitrago, better known as "Martin Llanos."

Members of the Bloque Centaurus later formed the Urabeños together with members of the ACCU, another group that fell under the command of paramilitary umbrella organization AUC.

Prosecutor investigators told press they had been able to identify 15 of the 22 corpses.

The fighting between Llanos and rival paramilitary groups in the middle of the last decade left thousands of paramilitary fighters dead.

Sunday 3 February 2013

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/27976-authorities-find-22-corpses-central-colombia-mass-grave.html

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Mass grave discovered in southern Colombia

Colombian authorities discovered at least 300 unidentified body remains in what they believe to be a graveyard belonging to the FARC in the southern department of Caqueta, independent newspaper La Nacion reported Monday. The mass grave was discovered May 30, when a committee from the Prosecutor General's Office found at least 100 graves, each containing the remains of three bodies. The site, in Caño Gafas, in the jurisdiction of Cartagena del Chaira, is the largest of its kind to ever be discovered in Colombia. Authorities believe there are likely many more mass graves in the department which they have been unable to search thoroughly due to the high risk of attack. The Prosecutor's Office sent in a team anthropologists, photographers, surveyors and field assistants to try and identify the bodies which they believe are former FARC guerrillas killed in combat, government soldiers and civilians. Exhumation will likely continue for many weeks. The authorities assume that at least 300 unidentified remains rest in a land located in Caño Eyeglasses jurisdiction of Cartagena del Chaira. THE NATION, Florence Staff Attorney General's Office, managed to reach Caño Glasses in Cartagena del Chaira (Caquetá), where they say that there may be more than 300 bodies buried in mass graves. Glasses Cano, a point located within the vast territory of the municipality of Cartagena del Chaira, has been one of the closed areas for the authorities to carry out exhumation of remains of missing persons. However, on 30 May, a committee of the Attorney General's Office was able to enter the site and check what was suspected by intelligence information, that were located on the site at least a hundred mass graves are presumed dozens missing. According to judicial sources, the authorities have also identified various points in the jurisdiction of the Union Peneya, Milan, Cartagena del Chaira, El Doncello, Paujil, Puerto Rico, San Vicente del Caguan or Solano, where it is virtually impossible to enter at the risk of an attack of the FARC. However, for the search committee from entering to Caño glasses are required at least 2 or 3 groups of counter-insurgency, backed by aircraft and helicopters, to move to the site that has been called the largest mass grave from the FARC . In August 2010, Cano Glasses, army units were heavy clashes with the FARC and managed to recover the area. The operations were in charge of Counterinsurgency Battalion 25 'Héroes de Paya'. The place has strong gang presence Ismael Mejia "of the FARC, which is part of the Southern Bloc of the FARC. Meanwhile, it was found that six bodies have been exhumed from two mass graves. THE NATION was established that the site would be at least 100 graves in which they would be mortal remains of three each. Thus, it is expected that the operation later exhumation at least every week. This finding has been called the largest mass grave of the FARC, above which was located in the Union Peneya and where lay the remains of 'El Mocho Cesar. However, it would be different because the cases in Caño glasses have buried the guerrillas not only guerrillas, but also soldiers and civilians. In this sense, military sources said that the bodies located in Caño glasses belong to guerrillas, soldiers and civilians "executed" by the FARC or killed in action. Similarly, the authorities are handling the hypothesis that within the nasal military bodies would also disappeared in the guerrilla takeover of El Billar Caquetá, which occurred in 1998 and where 64 soldiers were killed, 19 wounded and 43 kidnapped. To determine with certainty what would be the identities of the missing, the prosecution and Glasses Cano sent a team of anthropologists, photographers, surveyors and field assistants escorted by command of Joint Task Force Omega, with strong presence in the area. Although Cano glasses, has been called the largest mass grave of the FARC, not forget that there are still closed areas in the department to reach the authorities to verify intelligence reports that account for the existence of more cemeteries underground, where they would be missing the last decades of arduous military confrontation in the Caquetá. Monday 4 June 2012 http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/24398-farc-cemetery-discovered-in-souther-colombia.html http://www.lanacion.com.co/2012/06/04/descubren-cementerio-de-las-farc/

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