FOR report cited in L.A. Times

Kudos to John Lindsay-Poland, Co-Director of our Task Force on Latin American and the Carribean, for his research earlier this year that led to a report with Amnesty International on extrajudicial killings committed by Colombian army brigades financed by the United States. The report was mentioned in a recent Los Angeles Times story about the increase in the number of civilians killed by US-supported Colombian military units.

The number of civilians killed by the Colombian armed forces has soared, activist groups allege, with many of the abuses committed by army units that had been vetted by the State Department.

There were 329 so-called extrajudicial killings by the Colombian military and police last year, a coalition of Colombian rights groups asserts in a report, a 48% increase from the 223 reported in 2006.

The Colombian Commission of Jurists, a Bogota-based civil society group that is responsible for verifying many of the deaths, said last week that a significant number of killings of civilians by the armed forces had been reported so far in 2008 in five Colombian states, but provided no precise numbers

A separate analysis of last year’s killings by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a New York-based peace group, alleges that 47% of the homicides were committed by army units that had been scrutinized in 2006 or 2007 by the State Department, which determined that they had complied with human rights requirements, making them eligible for U.S. military aid and training.

- Los Angeles Times: Colombia military atrocities alleged, 8/21/08