The Rise and Fall of “False Positive” Killings in Colombia:

The Role of U.S. Military Assistance, 2000‐2010

A Report by the

Fellowship of Reconciliation and Colombia‐Europe‐U.S. Human Rights Observatory

May 2014

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) seeks to replace violence, war, racism and economic injustice with nonviolence, peace and justice. We are an interfaith organization committed to active nonviolence as a transforming way of life and as a means of radical change. We educate, train, build coalitions, and engage in nonviolent and compassionate actions locally, nationally, and globally.

P.O. Box 271, Nyack, NY 10960 Phone (United States): (1) 845‐358‐4601 www.forusa.org

The Coordinación Colombia‐Europa‐Estados Unidos (CCEEU) is a coalition of 210 Colombian organizations that work for the defense and promotion of human rights. It is an autonomous and broad platform for networking and shared work of non‐governmental and social organizations in different regions of Colombia. The Human Rights Observatory of CCEEU coordinates a Working Group on Extrajudicial Executions composed of 20 organizations that document cases of extrajudicial executions.

Phone (Colombia): (57) 1‐288 3875 http://www.ddhhcolombia.org.co E‐mail: [email protected]

2 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Table of Contents

Executive Summary ...... 4 Abstract...... 7 Introduction ...... 7 Background ...... 10 The Findings ...... 11 Timeline of important events in the U.S.‐Colombian Military Relationship ...... 12 Mission Definition, Political Support, Doctrine ...... 13 Intelligence and Special Operations Support ...... 13 False Positive Killings: Understanding Inter‐related Causes ...... 14 Unit Responsibility...... 20 U.S. Investment in Individual Military Officers ...... 21 Duration of Impacts of Training ...... 22 Record of Colombians Receiving Extensive U.S. Training ...... 23 Beyond a Sub‐national Analysis: Disproportionate Aid to a Problematic Army ...... 25 Why did reported extrajudicial executions decline after 2007? ...... 26 1) Civil Society Pressure, Media, and the False Positives Scandal ...... 27 2) Cracks in the Armor: The Colombian Government’s Response to Executions ...... 28 3) The Role of the United States: Mixed Results...... 31 Reducing Impunity to Reinforce Human Rights Changes ...... 32 Regional Case Studies ...... 33 Huila Department ...... 33 Arauca Department ...... 37 Meta/Guaviare ...... 39 Conclusions and Recommendations to U.S. Policymakers ...... 41 Appendix 1: Methodological Notes and Sources ...... 44 Appendix 2: Statistical Analysis of U.S. Aid and Executions Attributed to Brigades ...... 47 Appendix 4: Judicial advancements in charts ...... 51 Appendix 5: Simple Index of U.S. Aid to Colombian Army Brigades, 2000‐2010 ...... 54 Appendix 6: Glossary of Military Terms and Hierarchy ...... 55

Figures

Map: Extrajudicial executions per 100,000 inhabitants in Colombia, 2000‐2010 ...... 16 Table 1: Commanders of Territorial Brigades with Largest Number of Executions by Soldiers under their Command, 2000‐2010 ...... 18 Table 2: Commanders of Battalions and Mobile Brigades with Largest Number of Executions by Soldiers under their Command, 2000‐2010 ...... 19 Chart: Command responsibility and crimes of Colombian WHINSEC graduates vs. random Colombian officers ...... 24 Chat: Reported Executions by Colombian Armed Forces by Month 2000‐2010 ...... 26 Table 3: National Newspapers Coverage of Extrajudicial Executions 2003–2010 ...... 28 Chart Government Decisions related to Extrajudicial Executions 2003– 2010 ...... 30 Map: Extrajudicial executions by municipality in Huila, 2000‐2010 ...... 34 Map: Extrajudicial executions by municipality in Arauca, 2000‐2010 ...... 38 Map: Extrajudicial executions by municipality in Meta & Guaviare, 2000‐2010 ...... 41 Table 4: U.S. Military Aid and Extrajudicial Executions (OLS estimates) ...... ¡Error! Marcador no definido. Charts: Judicial Progress, Attorney General Human Rights Unit, 2009 and 2013 ...... 51 Charts: Judicial progress under Law 600 and Law 906, 2013 ...... 52 Charts: Judicial progress in National Human Rights Unit vs. State offices, 2013……………………………………..…….53

Cover photo by Colombian Army: Colombian soldiers train for operational planning, 2005.

3 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

The Rise and Fall of “False Positive” Killings in Colombia: The Role of U.S. Military Assistance, 2000‐2010

Fellowship of Reconciliation and Colombia‐Europe‐U.S. Human Rights Observatory

Executive Summary

This study advances a methodology for assessing the human rights impact of U.S. military assistance, by looking in depth at a discrete set of human rights violations carried out by the Colombian armed forces. It seeks to understand what role, if any, U.S. security assistance from 2000 to 2010 played in increasing or decreasing the commission of “false positive” killings – extrajudicial executions by the Colombian Army of civilians claimed to be have been killed in combat.

The United States has trained, armed and equipped the Colombian armed forces at a cost of $6.8 billion since 2000. Supporters cite aid to Colombia as proof that U.S. security assistance promotes human rights improvements. Critics look at the same case and assert that U.S. assistance tacitly encouraged or empowered the Colombian forces to carry out grave human rights abuses. Neither side presents systemic evidence.

The Colombian case is important not only because of the amount invested and the divergent claims about outcomes, but because of the renewed emphasis in U.S. military strategy on “building partner capacity,” reflected in $25 billion in foreign security assistance in 2012. Evaluating the human rights outcomes of this strategy and spending in Colombia is thus critically important for populations throughout the world.

Our findings for Colombia call into question much of the assumed wisdom about military assistance programs. We offer detail about the Colombia experience to model methods of evaluation, show what data is needed, and to demonstrate the importance of post‐ assistance assessments that may surprise participants, policy‐makers, and critics. We found that increased information collection and analysis that would facilitate such assessments is possible.

Based on data on 5,763 reported executions in Colombia and extensive documentation of U.S. assistance to the Colombian military, we found a positive correlation between the units and officers that received U.S. assistance and training, and the commission of extrajudicial killings. A statistical analysis of 1,821 of these executions where responsible units were directly identified showed that Army brigades that received a moderate as compared to low level of US assistance correlated to ten more executions per brigade in the two years following assistance. While the analysis does not show that U.S. aid specifically caused or encouraged executions, it casts strong doubt on claims that U.S. assistance improved human rights performance.

Army brigades that received high levels of U.S. aid did not show a statistically robust different number of executions, compared to those receiving little aid. Those receiving high levels of U.S. assistance, such as the Counter‐Narcotics Brigade, may have been subject to closer scrutiny for their human rights conduct than units receiving significant but less intensive assistance. Statistical ambiguity may reflect the small sample of high‐aid units, or the difficulty of identifying units responsible for executions, especially in areas where mobile units operate; much U.S. assistance focused on mobile brigades.

4 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE To understand how widespread the practice of “false positives” was, we analyzed the prevalence of the practice of extrajudicial killings across Colombian Army brigades. We found that in 2007, at least one execution was directly attributed to 99 of the Army’s 219 combat battalions and mobile brigades. We identified 117 brigade commanders and 184 battalion and mobile brigade commanders, whose units were directly identified as committing one or more extrajudicial killing between 2000 and 2010.

A question raised by this analysis is the role of military leadership and institutional culture within problematic army units. Three of the five brigade commanders with the largest number of executions reported by soldiers under their command were promoted to command the Army, including the current Army commander, General Jaime Lasprilla Villamizar. General Lasprilla is the active duty officer with the largest number of executions reportedly committed by soldiers under his brigade command, and he received substantially more U.S. training and assistance than his peers.

The provision of intelligence capacity and products is rarely evaluated for human rights outcomes. We found an example of U.S. intelligence assistance to Colombia that, though on its own may not have violated human rights, supported units that had adopted a strategy conducive to extrajudicial killing.

Measurements of the impacts of military assistance should evaluate the performance of individual officers in whom much assistance is invested, and the disproportionate role that commanders have in the performance of troops under their command. These officers and commanders, after receiving U.S. military training, transfer to other units that may or may not receive U.S. assistance, but are impacted by the training provided to individual officers.

U.S. military training, especially at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), is practically a required step for the promotion of a Colombian Army officer. Of the 25 Colombian WHINSEC instructors and graduates of the Command and General Staff course from 2001 to 2003 for which any subsequent information was available, 12 of them – 48% ‐ had either been charged with a serious crime or commanded units whose members had reportedly committed multiple extrajudicial killings. A random sample of 25 Colombian officers from approximately the same period showed a better human rights record than the WHINSEC cohort: we identified four (16%) who subsequently led units with multiple extrajudicial executions under their command. Another three officers led units with one execution under their command.

Colombia may have a “systemic [human rights] problem across the country” that is reflected in the high percentage of WHINSEC instructors and graduates implicated in crimes, as one U.S. military officer suggested. If that is the case, it raises a question of how the disproportionate representation of Colombian instructors at WHINSEC, or U.S. funding of Colombian training of other nations’ security forces, contributes to increased respect for human rights.

The number of executions in Colombia fell dramatically after 2008. Evidence indicates that diverse pressures ‐ from civil society, the office of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and civilians within the Colombian government who engaged the Army, were key to changing an institutional environment that sanctioned, if not encouraged, extrajudicial killings.

5 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

If reducing impunity is important to deterring serious abuses, we must consider the United States’ key role in two changes in the Colombian judicial system. The U.S. gave substantial material support for the Human Rights Unit of the Attorney General’s Office, which made significant judicial advances in prosecuting executions by 2013 (although less than 10% of reported executions had advanced to trial). But the US also funded and promoted the implementation of the new accusatory justice system, which has had poor results in prosecuting those responsible for committing executions.

While other branches of Colombian security forces also have committed abuses, this report focuses on assistance to and rights violations committed by the Army, which was a focus of U.S. assistance, and in which human rights concerns had been identified at the time assistance was expanded. The report also examines “false positives” and U.S. aid in greater detail in several regions of Colombia.

This evaluation is not possible without detailed data about human rights violations, U.S. assistance, and Colombian military structure and leadership, compiled by U.S. government agencies, human rights organizations, and private researchers. For more effective assessments, greater transparency about who receives assistance, and the amount and nature of what they receive, and tracking of the human rights performance of those recipients are needed.

Recommendations to U.S. policymakers regarding U.S. security assistance:

1. Legislators should require that U.S. security assistance be subject to rigorous assessment in order to evaluate the outcomes of such spending. As part of this effort, Congress should provide the mandate and resources needed to fully and independently evaluate the human rights outcomes of security assistance. 2. Inputs to help assess human rights outcomes must be solicited from outside the security assistance bureaucracy. 3. Policymakers, training managers and critics should not accept at face value “assumed wisdom” about military assistance. Honest evaluation of military assistance can yield significant and surprising lessons on the impacts of such programs. 4. The United States must monitor the assignments and human rights performance of officers, soldiers and units after they receive U.S. assistance. 5. Special attention should be directed to outcomes of assistance to units with histories of gross human rights abuses. 6. The conduct of recipients of training assistance – not their record of promotions – should be the measure of success in human rights outcomes. 7. Human rights performance by recipients of all assistance (not just human rights training) must be a fundamental metric for evaluating the results of such assistance. 8. Systematic information about the prosecution of government officials for the commission of human rights abuses should be gathered, and the rates of impunity should be considered an important human rights indicator. 9. Intelligence assistance – both intelligence products as well as capacities – should be considered part of assistance that is evaluated for human rights outcomes. 10. In order to benefit from input into evaluation from diverse stakeholders, information identifying the recipients of military assistance should be declassified, unless specific information demonstrates serious risks from disclosure.

6 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Abstract

This study advances a methodology for assessing the human rights impact of U.S. military assistance, by looking in depth at a discrete set of human rights violations carried out by the Colombian armed forces. It seeks to understand what role, if any, U.S. security assistance played in increasing or decreasing the commission of “false positive” killings by the Colombian Army from 2000 to 2010. We quantitatively measure human rights outcomes of U.S. assistance, both to Army brigades and to individual officers, and identify some events that correlate with the rise and fall of Army killings. We also examine outcomes of judicial assistance for reducing impunity.

The study starts with background and context on the Colombian armed forces, human rights abuses, and U.S. military assistance programs. It analyzes data that we obtained, with an explanation of our efforts to weed out extraneous factors that might skew the meaning, and concludes with tentative findings and recommendations for policy‐makers. Extensive background data and analysis is presented in appendices.

Introduction

The Colombian armed forces have faced charges of serious human rights abuses for much of the internal armed conflict that began formally in 1964, with the birth of the guerrilla armies, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN). Many of the abuses documented in the 1980s were of torture, arbitrary detention, and forced disappearance. The charges became serious enough in 1996 that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights established an office in Colombia. With Colombia in mind, the U.S. Congress established a law in 1997 prohibiting counter‐drug assistance to foreign military or police units credibly alleged to have committed a gross human rights abuse, a limitation subsequently expanded to all assistance to foreign armed forces, and called the Leahy Law.

Extrajudicial executions were a significant issue before 2000: 634 such executions were reportedly carried out by Colombian armed forces from 1994 through 1999.1 But the problem accelerated as the 2000s progressed, reaching a peak in 2007, declining in 2008, and showing a sharp and up‐to‐now sustained decrease after October 2008.

A large majority of extrajudicial killings documented during 2000‐2010 became known as “false positives.” During much of the period, the Army measured its success in counter‐ insurgency by the number of guerrillas killed. This was reflected in incentives to commanders and foot soldiers; in a policy introduced in November 2005; in the Army’s publicity of operational successes, which highlighted guerrilla “kills”; and in verbal pressure from high‐level commanders. Many of those claimed as guerrillas killed in combat, however, were in fact civilians killed by the armed forces to show results—a “false positive.”2

The United States has trained, armed and equipped the Colombian armed forces at a cost of $6.8 billion since 2000.3 Supporters of this program claim that this assistance has played a transformative role in reducing human rights violations by Colombian security forces. In fact, of all U.S. security assistance partners, Colombia is held up as proof that U.S. security assistance promotes human rights improvements.4 Meanwhile, critics look at the same case

7 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

and assert that U.S. assistance tacitly encouraged or empowered the Colombian forces to carry out grave human rights abuses such as “false positive” killings.

Neither side presents systemic empirical evidence. Proponents cite inputs (the number of soldiers trained, the amount of money provided) as their metrics of success, while discarding evidence of wrongdoing as aberrations, a ‘bad apple’ or two.5 Both critics and supporters of the U.S. role generally rely on anecdotal data and conflate correlation of U.S. assistance and positive or negative changes in human rights violations with causality. Very few people or agencies have collected relevant data on the operational outcomes of U.S. security assistance — either positive or negative.6 Even fewer have sought to credibly examine the impacts of this aid on armed forces’ respect for the basic human rights of the local population.

In addition to Colombia, the United States assists security forces in 186 countries. Supporters claim assistance has Following the end of U.S. combat in Iraq and played a transformative role in Afghanistan, the United States is increasing reducing human rights violations. its reliance on training and equipping Critics assert that assistance tacitly foreign security forces. The U.S. military encouraged grave human rights strategy released in 2012 emphasized abuses. Neither side presents ‘building partner capacity’: “Across the globe systematic empirical evidence. we will seek to be the security partner of choice, pursuing new partnerships with a growing number of nations — including those in Africa and Latin America… relying on exercises, rotational presence, and advisory capabilities.”7 The United States spent $25 billion on military and police assistance in fiscal year 2012, a five‐fold increase since 2001.8 Even so, as Congressional Quarterly reported, “as the military brass and its backers often note, it’s far cheaper and generally more effective to train others to fight local battles than to send in American forces.”9

Meanwhile, critics of security assistance start from an assumption of skepticism. “Instead of helping secure just democratic institutions, U.S. aid left countries with a legacy of repression and violence,” one critic concluded.10 Bolivian president Evo Morales said that U.S. military schools were training militaries in the mentality to “kill off the internal enemy, workers and indigenous people.”11

Assessing the impact of security cooperation efforts is difficult, but as the RAND Corporation notes, “it is important for providing stakeholders at all levels of government with effective tools to determine which aspects of these investments are most productive and which areas require refinement.”12 A key finding of this report is that increased information collection and analysis that would facilitate such assessments is possible.

The U.S. Congress has been curiously un‐curious about the impacts of U.S.‐funded security assistance.13 The International Military Education and Training (IMET) program is one of the few programs in which Congress has expressed some interest. IMET is a long‐standing but relatively small program that funded training for 4,165 personnel from 132 militaries in 2012.14 The Government Accounting Office in 1990 found that IMET managers had no mechanisms for evaluating outcomes, and did not track subsequent assignments or performance of most program graduates.15 A subsequent evaluation in 2007 used subjective survey responses by 106 IMET graduates and interviews with a smaller number

8 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE of U.S. officials to measure impact. It found that most graduates gained increased knowledge of their specialty function as well as of U.S. practices, but it made no attempt to measure conduct or performance.16 Another GAO report on IMET in 2011 concluded that “current evaluation efforts include few of the evaluation elements commonly accepted as appropriate for measuring progress of training programs, and do not objectively measure how IMET contributes to long‐term, desired program outcomes.”17

Nearly all the remaining studies undertaken to measure the impact of U.S. foreign military assistance have been conducted by academic scholars or for the Department of Defense (DOD). Academic studies have examined macro data or outcomes besides human rights.18 The DOD‐sponsored reports evaluate military aid’s efficacy purely in terms of military objectives—such as access for the U.S. military to local ports or airfields, interoperability of local forces with U.S. forces, or promotion of U.S. arms exports.19 The Pentagon has established its own shop for evaluating foreign military assistance at RAND’s National Defense Research Institute. In a series of more than a dozen studies since 2007, RAND analysts have examined security assistance from a variety of perspectives.20 None of the studies included respect for human rights among the outcomes proposed or used to measure effectiveness of U.S. assistance to build foreign military capacity.21 A synthesis of these studies states that “Most of the project hypotheses are based on received wisdom on [Building Partner Capacity] effectiveness”—i.e., the evaluations are predicated on unproven assumptions about programs’ efficacy.22

Most official assessments of U.S. military assistance are conducted by managers of the programs themselves, and “thus are subject to concerns about bias on the part of the assessors.”23 One way to overcome this bias is for a competent stakeholder outside the U.S. government to participate in government‐supported assessments of U.S. security assistance. Such a pairing could promote complementarity. Officials involved in U.S. military assistance programs have greater access to some kinds of information, including the nature and amount of assistance that foreign military units receive. But institutions outside the U.S. government have greater access to—and arguably a bigger commitment to gathering and analyzing—other kinds of information, such as data on human rights violations.24

Increasingly, leaders of the military assistance community recognize the need for evaluation. In January 2013, the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board criticized the “lack of a systematic approach to evaluation from the point of view of either program effectiveness or practical implementation” and “inadequate methods for feedback” for foreign military assistance. It recommended “a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation process” for U.S. security capacity building programs, to measure “effectiveness against defined goals in terms of basic national objectives, not just value for money or inputs provided.”25 And in April 2013, the White House issued a policy directive requiring increased analysis, assessments, and evaluations for U.S. security sector assistance.26

This report lays out our process in seeking to conduct an independent analysis of the impact of U.S. military assistance on the execution by Colombian security forces of more than 5,700 people outside of combat between 2000 and 2010. It also presents our tentative conclusions on the role that U.S. assistance played. Our independence helped in important ways, but “outsider” status also presented challenges.

9 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Background

The U.S. and Colombian armies have long worked closely together; Colombian soldiers participated alongside U.S. forces in the Korean War. U.S. influence on the Colombian military is profound.27 Washington made Colombia a high priority between 2000 and 2010. Commanders of the U.S. Southern Command—the Pentagon’s military command responsible for its activities in Central and South America—visited Colombia at least 53 times between 2000 and 2007.28

From fiscal year (FY) 2000 through FY2010, the United States spent $5.683 billion in military and police assistance to Colombia, roughly half of all U.S. security assistance in Latin America. At least $1.57 billion of that assistance was directed to the Colombian National Police.29 The United States approved assistance to hundreds of Colombian Army units, and the number of units assisted grew during the decade. In 2004, the U.S. approved 64 Army units, but by 2007, the number of Army units assisted grew to 108.30 Moreover, individual officers from another 31 units that had not been approved for assistance received U.S. training in 2006.31 As important, the geography of the units that received some form of assistance covered much more territory by 2007. Eleven brigades or divisions had U.S. military advisors at that time.32

U.S. aid was not distributed equally to all units, however. Some units were a focus of U.S. attention: the Counter‐Narcotics Brigade, especially in 2000‐2003; the 18th Brigade in Arauca, particularly in 2002‐2005; mobile Army units in Joint Task Force Omega, formed in 2004; and special operations commands – initially of the Army and after 2007 the Joint Special Operations Command.33 Joint Task Force Omega “absorbed almost everything” of U.S. aid, according to an Army officer involved in planning for the Army during the period of study.34 U.S. assistance for fuel and helicopter hours alone totaled between $12 million and $24 million annually from 2004 through 2010.35

In 2003, the United States also spent $25 million in Anti‐Terrorist Assistance to train army and police anti‐kidnapping units, known by their Spanish acronym as GAULA, which were distributed throughout Colombian Army brigades.36

If a unit did not have U.S. military personnel present as advisors or trainers, its soldiers and even commanders might not have been conscious of U.S. assistance to the unit. But although “the majority of the Colombian security forces never saw an American trainer,”37 many units received equipment or access to helicopters provided by the United States, or individual officers from the unit were sent elsewhere to receive U.S. training.

Supporters and critics of U.S. military assistance to Colombia have articulated opposite conclusions about the impact of U.S. assistance prior to and during this time period on human rights. From critics’ perspective, the rise and fall in the number of false positive killings in Colombia from 2002 to 2008 coincided with, first the growth, then the reduction, in the number of units assisted by the United States and the geographic areas in which they operated.

From another perspective, however, the decline in false positive killings after 2007‐08 may represent a long‐term impact of human rights conditions, training, and pressures, which included measures taken by the United States. These measures included human rights training of military officers and soldiers; funding of judicial advisors for military units;

10 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE application of Leahy Law restrictions; requirements for End Use Monitoring of U.S. assistance; messages regarding human rights in high‐level diplomatic meetings; support for the Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalía) National Human Rights Unit; and a reduction in military aid after human rights critics of U.S. policy in Colombia came to lead a Congressional majority in Washington in 2007.

The reduction of U.S. assistance in FY2008 coincided with growing if difficult‐to‐measure pressures on the Colombian armed forces – from the United Nations and the diplomatic corps, from human rights organizations, and from media as family members increasingly denounced extrajudicial killings. The following year, General Mario Montoya Uribe, whom some saw as encouraging such killings, resigned as Army commander.

Because these changes coincided with the Colombian state’s control of larger amounts of previously disputed territory, the causes of state violence were reduced. As political scientist Stathis Kalyvas has noted, “where levels of control are high, there is no defection, no denunciation, and… there will be little homicidal violence.”38

The National Human Rights Unit (NHRU) of the Fiscalía records 3,017 homicides committed by members of the armed forces from 2000 through 2010, in which the victim has been identified by name. State Fiscalía offices and other entities of the Fiscalía record another 1,134 such homicides during the same period, totaling 4,151 executions of known victims investigated by the civilian justice system. However, many executions are documented by human rights organizations that never enter the civilian justice system.39 The Human Rights Observatory of the Colombia‐Europe‐U.S. Coordination (CCEEU) has documented an additional 1,612 executions by members of the armed forces from 2000 through 2010, where the victims’ names are known, but are not investigated by the Fiscalía, leading to a total of 5,763 victims of executions analyzed in this report.40

We also gathered detailed documentation of U.S. training and other assistance to the Colombian military, through U.S. government reports, dozens of interviews with U.S. and Colombian officials, requests for documents, and a review of literature and press reports on U.S. assistance.

In addition to a national‐level review, we examined four regions of the country with a significant number of reported executions by the armed forces: Antioquia, Arauca, Meta/Guaviare, and Huila. While each region had high levels of executions, they also have important variations. Executions in Meta and Antioquia have received considerable national and international attention from media, human rights organizations and the diplomatic corps, while those in Huila have not. Colombian military units operating in these departments also received different levels of U.S. military assistance, and reflect different levels of certainty regarding what units were responsible for executions.

Findings in Brief

As documented in this report, there is a correlation between Army brigades that received a medium level of U.S. assistance and the commission of extrajudicial killings. Multiple killings were committed by soldiers in a higher percentage of units commanded by U.S.‐trained officers than by a random sample of military officers.

11 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Timeline of important events in the U.S.‐Colombian Military Relationship

President Clinton signed Plan Colombia into law, in the form of a $1.3 billion assistance package of mostly military funding, on July 13, 2000. Military assistance ballooned in FY1999‐2000 from $309.7 million to $771.5 million, most of it designated for the purchase of helicopters.41 The United States also agreed to train and equip a new battalion (subsequently a brigade) that would be restricted to counter‐narcotics operations in southern areas, where FARC forces were concentrated. Although the Counter‐Narcotics Brigade eventually operated in departments outside the south, the focus of counter‐drug military operations supported by the United States never shifted to paramilitary groups and their successors that were deeply involved in drug trafficking.

After the September 11 events in the United States, “counter‐terrorism” became a watch‐ word in Washington, and programs using it received large amounts of funding. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, inaugurated in August 2002 after a campaign promising to escalate war against the FARC after negotiations collapsed earlier in the year, also employed the language of counter‐terrorism, just as Washington In 2002‐2008, more committed to make its war “global.” In the State Colombian military and Department report on international terrorist incidents police received U.S. training in 2001, Colombia accounted for the majority of 42 than any other country. them. In November 2002, President George W. Bush signed a directive that explicitly expanded that mission for the use of U.S. resources in Colombia (training, equipment, helicopters) beyond counter‐drug operations to include targeting terrorist organizations. The expanded mission had already been included in Congressional legislation for Defense Department assistance to Colombia signed into law in August, and afterwards became standard language in all legislation for military assistance to Colombia.43

On February 13, 2003, three U.S. civilian contractors aboard a Cessna aircraft doing surveillance of disputed territories in Caquetá Department survived a crash landing and were taken captive by FARC guerrilla troops. Their captivity lasted more than five years, and became the fulcrum for extensive U.S. military and intelligence efforts that were invested in the men’s rescue or release.44 According to one Colombian colonel involved in U.S. assistance, the idea up to February 2003 was not to be involved in the Colombian internal war, as long as guerrillas did not target U.S interests. But the kidnapping of three U.S. contractors at that time, he said, was a “breaking point.”45

Over the next four years, the United States maintained military assistance to Colombia at an average of more than $600 million annually, the fifth largest recipient such assistance in the world. From 2002 through 2008, more Colombians are recorded as receiving U.S. military and police training than any other country – one in every seven foreign soldiers or police receiving U.S. training during that period was Colombian. 46 Both George W. Bush and Alvaro Uribe were re‐elected president and developed a close friendship.

In 2006, however, partly as a result of fatigue with the war in Iraq, U.S. voters elected a Democratic majority to both houses of Congress. Nancy Pelosi, who had been a vocal human rights critic of aid to the Colombian Army,47 became Speaker of the House of Representatives. Although Congress did not exercise oversight of some $150 million in Pentagon assistance to Colombia, in 2007 it reduced military assistance by more than a

12 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE third. Some of this reflected prior plans to “nationalize” Plan Colombia by progressively transferring responsibility to Colombian armed forces. Uribe extended a “wealth tax” in 2007 to finance the war, 48 and Colombia increased its purchases of U.S. military equipment by more than $400 million between 2005 and 2010.49 But the reduced military aid also responded to growing concerns about human rights violations.

In addition, the United States invested in Colombian military training schools and facilities, for example by sponsoring Colombia’s first non‐commissioned officer school.

Mission Definition, Political Support, Doctrine

U.S. military assistance and influence in Colombia from 2000 to 2010 consisted of a wide spectrum of support, from the high‐level political expressions to the on‐the‐ground technical aid, forms that tended to support each other. United States public declarations and a portion of U.S. training focused on improving respect for human rights and international humanitarian law by Colombian forces as part of the shared mission of the United States and Colombia. U.S. legislation, such as the Leahy Law, used the carrot of military assistance – most of which did not focus on human rights – to incentivize sanctions for violators, by threatening to deny assistance to units with unsanctioned violators.

General Mario Montoya affirmed that the most important support from the United States was moral and political support: “They have been our number‐one ally. The United States is the only country that has supported us openly. They have been our unconditional allies.”50 A former Colombian air force officer said the same – that U.S. support has been more moral than operational. The Colombian military “has an emotional dependence on U.S. support,” according to a U.S. military mission chief in Bogotá quoted in 2007.

U.S. military support can also reward some officers and units more than others. “A MILGP officer… can empower a Colombian senior officer by making him successful,” according to Douglas Porch of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.51 U.S. advisors posted with brigades or divisions could channel material requests from commanders to the MILGP commander, for example.

Intelligence and Special Operations Support

U.S. intelligence assistance to the Colombian military has had wide application, beyond immediate operational objectives. Intelligence theoretically allows units to target combatants more effectively, and to commit fewer errors in targeting or harming civilians – if eliminating such harm is a priority for both the producer and recipient of the intelligence.

CIA analysts and contractors established an intelligence cell in Colombia that helped create regional fusion centers to push tactical intelligence to local commanders ‐ Army Regional Military Intelligence groups, known by their Spanish acronym RIMEs – and “taught the art of recruiting informants to Colombian units,” according to a Washington Post investigation. The RIMEs supported by the U.S. were located in several divisions, including at the 4th Brigade in Medellín (which was otherwise largely excluded from direct assistance).52 According to an officer who served in the 4th Brigade from 2002‐2007, including command staff, “The RIME gave information to the Seventh Division and the Fourth Brigade, first‐ hand.”53

13 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

The Seventh Division, which operates from the same military base as the Fourth Brigade, had two to four intelligence advisors as part of the RIME who helped the brigade create cells focused on “high value targets” – guerrilla leaders. “The RIME was huge. It had a lot of capacity, technical capacity that the United States gave,” the officer told FOR. But intelligence capacities provided by the RIME were also used in operations against people accused of serving as civilian guerrilla collaborators, known as militias, especially in Eastern Antioquia, where the problem of extrajudicial executions was acute in 2004‐2006.

“There was a problem,” the officer said. “All of the [guerrilla] militias were totally secret, totally unknown for government officials. They gave me intelligence information that for Colombian authorities was no good. It’s not judicial evidence.” Militia members’ names did not appear in the guerrillas’ written combat plans. The official said that General Montoya developed military action against militia members, so that full‐time combatants would be cut off from supplies, a strategy that was continued after Montoya left the 4th Brigade in 2003. U.S. assistance to the RIME in Medellín is an example of intelligence assistance that, though on its own not violating human rights, supported units that had adopted a strategy conducive to extrajudicial killing.

The United States also gave intensive assistance to the Colombian military’s special operations forces, especially the Special Operations Command, known as CCOES. Urban Special Operations units have reportedly committed some extrajudicial executions, but none have been attributed directly to CCOES. Such low levels of executions attributed to special forces may be a product of U.S.‐supported discipline.

But it is also possible that follow‐up operations after bombings of guerrilla camps may include extrajudicial killings that are not reported. Bombing operations generated from U.S.‐Colombian target selection, technology, and tactics included killing anyone that moved near the target. According to the Post, U.S. and Colombian personnel jointly developed bombing tactics that include “blast pressure [that] would kill anyone else close in” and “shooting the wounded trying to go for cover.” Forty FARC leaders have been killed in air strikes between 2007 and 2013, and close to two dozen more have been killed through other operations.54

False Positive Killings: Understanding Inter‐related Causes

Attempts to measure the human rights impacts of foreign military assistance have different points of departure. One starting point is to examine a change in human rights behavior, for good or ill, and attempt to understand what role, if any, foreign assistance played in the change. Since foreign assistance never is a sole cause of such changes, this effort particularly examines the relation of foreign assistance to other factors causing the change.

Analysts have identified several factors that contributed to the growth of extrajudicial killings in Colombia during 2002‐2007.55 These include:

 The creation of incentives for both officers and foot soldiers to measure success with enemy kills. Under this mindset, presenting guerrillas killed in combat was an important measure of Colombian military success. A 2004 US intelligence report characterizing the effect stated, “this mindset tends to fuel human rights abuses by well‐ meaning soldiers trying to get their quota to impress superiors.”56 In November 2005,

14 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Defense Minister Camilo Ospina issued Directive 29, which established as policy monetary compensation to civilians for actions leading to the killing of members of illegal armed groups.  Lack of controls, including administrative and judicial mechanisms to punish soldiers and officers implicated in extrajudicial killings – in other words, impunity. (See below.)  A risk‐averse culture of “force protection”: Performance measures “excessively valued – sometimes exclusively – the opponent’s casualties, and disproportionately punished the [military’s] own operational failures,” according to security analyst Alfredo Rangel. “Consequence: a tendency to achieve casualties without assuming risks, without exposing themselves much or, better, not at all.”57  The role of national leaders, such as Army commander General Mario Montoya Uribe (See below).  Some particularly aggressive, ambitious or unethical officers at the regional or local level. (See case study on Huila below.)

A recent analysis of the time variations in 5,763 extrajudicial executions between 2000 and 2010 associates the prevalence of the monthly rate of such killings with 17 different political events, to test correlation with these events. 58 The events included the incumbencies of Colombian presidents, armed forces commanders, and Army commanders, and U.S. ambassadors during the period, as well as three point‐specific events. The results are strictly correlational, but nevertheless offer insight.

President Uribe’s presidency is associated with an 84% to 101% increase in extrajudicial killings, a result that holds when the analysis controls for six other political events, making the statistical significance of this result very robust.

The tenure of General Mario Montoya, who commanded the Colombian Army from March 2006 to November 2008, was associated with the largest increase – 144% ‐ in executions of any Army commander during the period. According to a high‐ranking officer interviewed for this study, General Montoya told him, “Look, you’ve let up, you don’t have kills…. What you have to do, if there’s a kill, bring all the troops and give them 15 days off and a million pesos for each soldier. Where to get the money? Take it from reserve expenses. Intelligence money.”59

The November 2005 directive rewarding killings of members of illegal armed groups is associated with an increase of 65% to 150% in false positive killings. The eruption in the media of the “false positives” scandal in September 2008 is strongly associated with a significant decrease in average monthly executions, between 149% and 160%.60 The November 2007 directive that prioritized captures and demobilizations over enemy kills, on the other hand, shows a statistically insignificant negative correlation with executions.

The tenure of Juan Manuel Santos as defense minister (July 2006 – May 2009) is associated with a small and imprecise correlation with executions when the analysis controls for other events.

15 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

1 Map: Extrajudicial executions per 100,000 inhabitants in Colombia, 2000‐2010

16 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Bad Apples or an Institutional Problem?

We analyzed the number of executions attributed to units and the overall number of combat units in the Colombian Army, to determine which units were statistical “outliers,” and to what extent the practice of extrajudicial executions was widespread. In 2007, at least one execution was directly attributed to 99 of the Army’s 219 combat battalions and mobile brigades; while at least one execution was directly attributed to 23 out of 33 Army brigades.61

A question raised by this analysis is the role of leadership and institutional culture within Three of the five brigade problematic units. Where we were able to commanders with the identify unit commanders, we measured the largest number of number of extrajudicial killings committed executions reported by under brigade and battalion commanders. This soldiers under their yielded a list of 117 brigade commanders and command became 184 battalion and mobile brigade commanders, commander of the Army. whose units were directly identified as committing one or more extrajudicial killing.

Though executions were pervasive, there were statistical outliers – battalions and brigades with exceptionally high numbers of executions attributed to them. In 2007, the year of highest number of executions, six battalions and mobile brigades were high outliers, and just one territorial brigade – the Ninth Brigade in Huila ‐ was a high outlier.62

Similarly, some commanders oversaw much larger numbers of executions. Table 1 reflects the brigade commanders with the largest number of extrajudicial killings committed by soldiers under their command. Three of the five brigade commanders with the largest number of executions reported by soldiers under their command became commander of the Army, including the current Army commander, General Jaime Lasprilla Villamizar, who is the active duty officer with the largest number of executions reportedly committed by soldiers under his brigade command. Table 2 reflects the battalion and mobile brigade commanders with the largest number of extrajudicial killings committed by soldiers under their command.63

17 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Table 1: Commanders of Territorial Brigades with Largest Number of Executions by Soldiers under their Command, 2000‐2010

Executions Years of Brigade Commander under Prior U.S. Aid to Brigade Known U.S. Training of Commander executions commander

4th Brigade intelligence unit aided 2004‐2005 4th Brigade Oscar Enrique González Peña 143 2‐week School of Americas (SOA) course, 1980 2004; no other direct aid 11th Brigade; 4th 4th Brigade intelligence unit aided 2004‐2006 Luis Roberto Pico Hernández 98 None known Brigade 2004; no other direct aid Brigade command and 3 battalions 2006‐2007 9th Brigade Jaime Alfonso Lasprilla Villamizar 75 SOA instructor 2001‐02; Natl. Defense U, 2005‐06 assisted, 2005‐07 2001‐2003 4th Brigade Mario Montoya Uribe 59 No direct aid SOA instructor, 1993‐94; year at Fort Knox 4th Brigade; 17th 4th Brigade special forces assisted, SOA courses, 1977 & 1983; year at Natl Defense U., 2005‐2008 Brigade; 10th Mob. Jorge Rodríguez Clavijo 61 2006; no other direct aid 2002‐03 Brig. 2005‐2008 16th Brigade Leonardo Alfonso Barrero Gordillo 51 4 battalions assisted, 2005‐07 5‐week SOA course, 1977 Brigade command and 3 battalions 2005‐2008 9th Brigade William Fernando Pérez Laiseca 48 6‐week SOA course, 1977 assisted, 2005‐07 Brigade command and 3 battalions 2007 11th Brigade William Hernan Peña Forero 42 2‐week SOA course, 1980 assisted, 2005‐07 2006‐2007 16th Brigade Henry William Torres Escalante 40 4 battalions assisted, 2005‐07 2‐week SOA course, 1981 2006‐2007 8th Brigade Jairo Herazo Marzola 39 1 battalion assisted, 2004‐2007 6‐week SOA course, 1976 1‐month SOA course, 1976; taught 1‐week course, Inter‐ 2005‐2006 17th Brigade Luis Alfonso Zapata Uribe 36 No direct aid American Defense College, 2002 2003‐2004 2nd Brigade Gilberto Rocha Ayala 34 1 battalion assisted, 2000‐04 SOA instructor, 1995‐96 Brigade command and 3 battalions 2006‐2008 30th Brigade Paulino Coronado Gámez 30 SOA courses, 1977, 1992 (3 months, PsyOps) assisted, 2007 2006‐2007 5th Brigade José Joaquín Cortés Franco 29 No direct aid SOA instructor, 1993‐94 2006‐2007 7th Brigade Francisco José Ardila Uribe 29 1 battalion assisted, 2006‐07 3‐week SOA course, 1988 2007 10th Brigade Fabricio Cabrera Ortiz 28 No direct aid SOA courses, 1982, 1992 11th Brigade/ 27th 11th Brigade command and 3 2005‐2008 Javier Fernández Leal 27 None known Brigade battalions assisted, 2005‐07 Brigade command and 3 battalions 2005‐2008 12th Brigade Jaime Calderon Valenzuela 27 6‐week SOA course, 1976 assisted, 2004‐06 2006 29th Brigade Juan Pablo Amaya Kerguelen 26 1 battalion assisted, 2006 2‐week SOA course, 1981

2002 2nd Brigade Gabriel Díaz Ortiz 24 1 battalion assisted, 2000‐02 1‐month SOA course, 1980

2008‐2009 8th Brigade Emiro José Barrios Jiménez 24 1 battalion assisted, 2004‐07 2‐week SOA course, 1983

Sources: Data compiled from Colombian Attorney General’s Office; Deuda con la Humanidad (CINEP); other human rights organizations; U.S. State Department lists of assisted units. Attendance of School of the Americas and other U.S. military schools based on lists released by those schools.

18 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Table 2: Commanders of Battalions and Mobile Brigades with Largest Number of Executions by Soldiers under their Command, 2000‐2010

Executions Years of Unit Commander under Prior U.S. Aid to Unit U.S. Training of Commander Executions commander 2‐week SOA course, 1983; 2007 15th Mobile Brigade Santiago Herrera Fajardo 37 No direct aid commanded unit trained by US forces in Arauca, 2003 11th Brigade aided 2007‐2008 Joint Task Force Sucre, 11th Brigade Luis Fernando Borja Aristizabal 35 2005‐07, no direct aid 4‐week SOA course, 1986 to JTF Sucre 2006‐2007 Pigoanza Infantry Battalion, 9th Brigade Carlos Jair Salamanca Robles 30 Assisted, 2005‐2007 4‐week SOA course, 1987 6 months West Point, 1981; 20 months at Ft. Bragg, 1990‐92; year 2002‐2003 La Popa Battalion, 2nd Brigade Publio Hernán Mejía Gutiérrez 29 No direct aid at Inter‐American Defense Board, 1996‐97 BRIM‐12 aided 2006; 2006‐2008 12th Mobile Brigade; 16th Brigade Cipriano Peña Chivatá 29 16th Brigade aided SOA courses in 1982, 1996 2005‐07 WHINSEC instructor, 2001‐02; 2008 Magdalena Infantry Battalion, 9th Brigade Marcos Evangelista Pinto Lizarazo 26 Assisted, 2005‐2007 Army War College, 2013‐14 Artillery Battalion No. 4 "Col. Jorge 2004 Juan Carlos Barrera Jurado 22 No direct aid 2‐week SOA course, 1984 Eduardo Sanchez Rodríguez", 4th Brigade 2008 15th Mobile Brigade Rubén Darío Castro Gómez 22 No direct aid 5‐week SOA course, 1985 2007 16th Brigade Gaula Gustavo Enrique Soto Bracamonte 20 No direct aid 2‐week SOA course, 1993 Engineering Battalion “General Pedro Nel 2006‐2007 Edgar Avila Doria 17 No direct aid 1‐month SOA course, 1986 Ospina”, 4th Brigade 2007 Magdalena Battalion, 9th Brigade Edgar Alberto Rodríguez Sánchez 16 Assisted, 2005‐2007 SOA course, 1993 (unconfirmed) Infantry Battalion No. 15 ‘General 2006‐2008 Francisco de Paula Santander’, 30th Álvaro Diego Tamayo Hoyos 15 Assisted 2007 1‐month SOA course, 1987 Brigade Codazzi Engineering Battalion, 3rd 2007‐2008 Elmer Mauricio Peña Pedraza 14 Assisted, 2004‐2008 None known Brigade 2006‐2007 Pichincha Battalion, 3rd Brigade Henry Elías Piraquive Caicedo 14 No direct aid 1‐month SOA course, 1987

2007 Cisneros Battalion, 8th Brigade Jancel Antonio Rodríguez Herrera 13 Assisted, 2004‐2007 1‐month SOA course, 1987

Sources: Data compiled from Colombian Attorney General’s Office; Deuda con la Humanidad (CINEP); other human rights organizations; U.S. State Department lists of assisted units. Attendance of School of the Americas and other U.S. military schools based on lists released by those schools.

19 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Unit Responsibility

To produce assessments of military assistance on comparative outcomes, we can compare the human rights behavior of recipient units after periods when they received much assistance with the same behavior of the same or other units after receiving less or no direct assistance, attempting to control for other variables that affected respect for human rights.

Research for this report documented 1,821 extrajudicial executions between 2000 and 2010 in which an Army unit responsible for the killing was directly identified – by witnesses, judicial agencies, or human rights organizations.64

We have attempted to measure unit responsibility for extrajudicial killings where there is evidence of direct responsibility, although we acknowledge that this accounts for less than one third of the number of all executions reportedly committed by the armed forces during this period for which the victim’s name is known. Some analysts have suggested that executions where a unit was identified may not be representative – for example, better training or disproportionate power of some units might permit them to commit killings and escape undetected.

We can also attempt to measure unit responsibility by an analysis of the brigade operating area or jurisdiction in which the killing occurred, as we have done before.65 This analysis faces the challenge that in some areas multiple brigades operate, including mobile brigades whose operating areas may be unclear. For this reason, we have opted to focus our analysis on killings where a responsible unit was identified.66

Using an aid index of low, medium, or high levels of U.S. military aid to brigades, a statistical analysis of executions where responsible units were identified showed a weakly significant positive relationship between extrajudicial executions and the mid‐level range of U.S. military aid – brigades where multiple battalions received U.S. assistance in the year executions occurred. A similar finding was reached when we measured U.S. aid by the proportion of the brigade’s battalions that received U.S. assistance. Both methods of measuring U.S. assistance showed an additional nine to ten executions in the two years following medium levels of assistance to a brigade, compared to brigades receiving little aid.67

The story is less clear for brigades that received high levels of U.S. aid. The number of executions committed by brigades in the two years following high levels of U.S. assistance was not markedly different from those receiving little or no direct aid. Moreover, the margin of error is large for calculating executions committed by high‐aid units, so we cannot say with confidence either that high‐aid brigades committed more or less executions than low‐aid brigades.68 (See Appendix 2) The story is also complicated by the difficulty of identifying responsible units, especially in areas where mobile units operate; much U.S. assistance focused on mobile brigades.

Several reasons may account for these findings. First, those receiving high levels of U.S. assistance may have been subject to closer scrutiny for their human rights conduct than units receiving significant but less intensive assistance. This was likely the case for the Counter‐Narcotics Brigade, trained by the United States at the start of Plan Colombia when

20 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Congressional concern for human rights weighed heavily. Conversely, units that received significant but not high levels of assistance may have been emboldened by U.S. support, without scrutiny or accountability mechanisms, or assistance may have reflected the relative power of those units within the army to obtain assistance – institutional power also reflected in their capacity to commit executions with impunity.

Second, the mission orientation of many units that received high levels of U.S. assistance was focused on drug trafficking, pipeline protection, or “high value targets” (e.g. FARC leaders). This orientation may have channeled the pressure for operational results away from large number of kills, toward other kinds of results – cocaine labs destroyed, reduced number of pipeline spills, or killing guerrilla leaders who could not be civilians disguised as combatants (though these operations can produce other victims).

The lack of robust statistical results for high‐aid units may reflect the smaller sample of such units. In addition, the ambiguous results for high‐aid units may reflect the difficulty of identifying responsible units, especially in areas where mobile brigades operate. Much U.S. assistance focused on mobile brigades in the Omega Task Force. The map of municipalities where executions occurred demonstrates this: the Omega’s operating area had a high level of extrajudicial killings, 242 in just eight municipalities from 2000 to 2010. But the responsible brigades were identified for just 95 of these executions.69 Moreover, our analysis addresses only those persons who were identified by name. The Fiscalía is investigating executions of 100 ‘John Does’ in the Omega’s operating area, and municipal cemeteries in three of the municipalities contain 1,190 ‘John Does’, some of whom may have been extra‐judicially executed. If even a relatively small portion of executions where a responsible unit was not identified, or of these unidentified ‘John Does’ were killed outside of combat by U.S.‐supported Omega units, this would change our findings on the outcomes of high levels of U.S. unit assistance.

U.S. Investment in Individual Military Officers

We have analyzed U.S. assistance to Colombian Army units with lists of assisted units produced by the State Department. But this does not adequately capture several aspects of assistance, even if we can measure the type and amount of assistance to each unit. Measurements of impacts of assistance must also address individual officers in whom much assistance is invested, and the disproportionate role that commanders have in the performance of troops under their command. These officers and commanders, after receiving U.S. military training, transfer to other units that may not receive U.S. assistance. Some examples illustrate this.

When Col. Hernán Mejía Gutiérrez was arrested in 2007 and accused of participation in the “false positive” killings of 18 people, the U.S. Embassy reported in a cable that neither Colonel Mejia nor his unit were receiving U.S. assistance.70 Despite this, he had extensive U.S. training. He attended West Point in 1981. He later went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for ten months of training in psychological operations; and returned to Fort Bragg in 1992 for another ten months. He attended a course at the School of Americas. He spent a year and a half in Washington in the Inter‐American Defense Board. He participated in the multinational operation in Haiti led by the United States. General Norman Schwarzkopf was going to write the introduction to his autobiography.71

21 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Mejia was assigned to command the “La Popa” Battalion in the northern city of Valledupar in early 2002. According to his court judgment, Mejia entered an agreement with the paramilitary capo known as “Jorge 40,” by which “the military did not fight the paramilitaries and gave them weapons, munitions and supplies in exchange for individuals from guerrilla groups and punished paramilitaries in order for them to be extra‐judicially executed and later presented as ‘positives.’” An elite squad assembled and trained by Mejia began to produce many enemy kills.

According to Mejia, on October 25, 2002, he received a call from President Uribe with information on an armed group on a rural farm, urging him to take action. Eighteen people died in the resulting operation, all them declared to be ELN guerrillas killed in combat. But in fact they were paramilitaries; according to the Fiscalía, the battalion ambushed them as a favor to “Jorge 40,” who regarded them as having gone rogue. In September 2013, Mejia was sentenced to 19 years in prison.72 The human rights outcome of the U.S. investment in Colonel Mejia was roundly negative.

Carlos Velásquez, on the other hand, also received extensive military training from the United States. He trained at the School of the Americas, and returned to the school as an instructor for a year. He also attended the Command and General Staff course at Fort Leavenworth for a year. In the 1990s, he commanded the elite unit that pursued the Cali Cartel with U.S. support.73 In 1996, when he served as chief of staff to the 17th Brigade, he denounced brigade commander General Rito del Alejo in a letter to the armed forces commander for his permissive approach to paramilitaries, who were then murdering many civilians in an offensive in the region. He was thrown out of the Army for his action.74

Here, an investment in Colonel Velasquez had an outcome of an officer with integrity who resisted human rights abuses. How can we explain such different results from the U.S. investment in these officers?

Duration of Impacts of Training

The effectiveness of training can be measured over varying periods of time. An official with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency suggested one year after U.S. training occurs as a point at which to evaluate its impact.75 One Colombian general said that the impact of tactical training – infantry skills, maneuvers, etc. – is immediate, but wears off quickly if not reinforced, while strategic training – such as courses for higher officials, generally longer and often conducted in the United States – has more long‐term impact.76

But the 2007 evaluation of IMET suggested that for officers who receive U.S. training and rise in rank and influence within their armed forces, that impact increases with time: “As IMET graduates progress in their careers, it is likely that their impact and IMET’s impact on ministry of defense and country will increase along with their own responsibilities and spheres of influence.”77 An official closely involved with the effort in Colombia made a similar point: “a lot of it depends on… how they internalize it, and how the people that get the training move up in the armed forces.”78 In other words, officers who receive U.S. training early in their careers may have incorporated more U.S. doctrine and military culture into their conduct and leadership by the time they reach higher in the hierarchy.

22 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Many observers, particularly in the military, point out that all individuals and units nominated for U.S. training since 1998 must be vetted for human rights violations and, if found to be implicated in such violations, are excluded from assistance in accordance with the Leahy Law. Inadequacies in the application of Leahy Law in Colombia have been critiqued elsewhere.79 But more important, the Leahy Law does not evaluate the human rights effects of U.S. training or other assistance. On the other hand, the documentation generated by application of the Leahy Law when military assistance is sustained over several years facilitates such evaluation.

Record of Colombians Receiving Extensive U.S. Training

Research for this report identified by name 166 Colombian military officers who received at least six months of U.S. training since 1980, 73 of them since 2000.

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC; until 2000 the U.S. Army School of the Americas) trained 5,239 Colombian military and police personnel from 1999 to 2012.80 WHINSEC measures its effectiveness primarily by documenting how many of its graduates go on to become armed forces commanders, defense ministers, or even heads of state in their nations, according to its commander.81

A review of WHINSEC graduates’ records is limited by the Defense Department’s refusal to release names of instructors or graduates since 2003. The names of about 1,900 graduates in WHINSEC’s first three years have been disclosed. The large majority were young cadets who have not risen much in rank since their time in Georgia, or took courses lasting only two or three weeks. While these experiences may be formative in soldiers’ subsequent careers, it is most meaningful to measure the performance of graduates who had longer experience at WHINSEC.

The Colombian officers staying the most time at WHINSEC are those who serve as instructors, who generally stay a year, and those taking the command and general staff course. In its first three years (2001‐2003), according to the list of names released by WHINSEC, there were 21 Colombian instructors, including an assistant commandant of the school, more than from any other nation, while eight Colombians took the Command and General Staff course.82 The information available on Colombian military officers and Army human rights violations provides an important test case for the claim made by WHINSEC commander Col. Glenn Huber in June 2012 that there were no WHINSEC graduates he was aware of who had been charged with human rights abuses.

Of the 25 Colombian WHINSEC instructors and graduates for which any subsequent information was available, 12 of them – 48% ‐ had either been charged with a serious crime or commanded units whose members had reportedly committed multiple extrajudicial killings.83

23 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

To determine whether this percentage of Command responsibility and Colombian officers implicated in crimes of Colombian WHINSEC violations or commanding units with graduates vs. random Colombian multiple executions was officers disproportionate, we examined a 35 random sample of 25 officers from Information approximately the same period, with the 30 unavailable same combination of rank and military branch as the WHINSEC instructors and 25 No violations graduates. Of these 25, we identified four found who subsequently led units with 20 multiple extrajudicial executions under One execution their command.84 Another three officers 15 under command led units with one execution under their command. 10 Multiple executions under command 5 Some officers with the largest number Tried or of civilian killings committed under sentenced for their command received significantly 0 serious crimes Colombian Random more U.S. training than other officers. WHINSEC Colombian instructors officers same /long‐term rank, branch, Why did this occur? Did the Leahy students, time period vetting process fail at the Embassy or 2001‐03 State Department level, and allow

2 Chart: Command responsibility and crimes of Colombian violators to be admitted to WHINSEC WHINSEC graduates vs. random Colombian officers training, which was then reflected in their subsequent records? Did their experience at Fort Benning give these officers such added status and immunity within their own institutions to lead them to believe they could commit crimes with impunity? Was the selection of officers for WHINSEC instructors and command courses based on operational results that prioritized kills, regardless of whether these people were killed in combat? Were the officers implicated in these crimes – as many Colombian military officers believe – the victims of “judicial warfare” by which guerrillas and their supposed agents in the judicial system fabricated stories about civilian killings?

Or, did Colombia – as one U.S. Army officer associated with WHINSEC suggested – have a “systemic [human rights] problem across the country” that was reflected in the high percentage of WHINSEC instructors and graduates implicated in crimes? And if it is the case that Colombia had such a systemic problem, how does the disproportionate representation of Colombian military instructors at WHINSEC – some 42% of Latin American instructors in 2012 – contribute to increased respect for human rights?85

An academic serving on the WHINSEC Board of Visitors who read this analysis of Colombian WHINSEC graduates asked: “So if a student of mine leaves an ethics class and engages in criminal activity does that make me or my university liable for her activity?” No one suggested that WHINSEC or its instructors be held criminally liable for the activities of its graduates. But here is the more specific analogy:

24 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Suppose a university professor taught a course on academic ethics, and of 25 students in his class, 12 were subsequently charged with plagiarism in other academic work? And what if this occurred after a previous scandal in which it was found that some courses and the university’s library carried a book on how to commit plagiarism, and a number of previous students had committed it on a large scale. Would the administration, students, and alumni demand a serious examination of what happened, and why? Might the professor be removed from the course, or even from the university? The accreditation gods might be awakened. There would presumably be a critical look at how students were recruited to the university. And there would be more follow‐up evaluation for students of subsequent courses.

Or, the administration could try to hush it up, not even be curious about why so many students committed plagiarism, as if it never happened, as if it wasn't that serious, as if it was a problem of the culture of plagiarism among students, etc.

Some of the officers with the largest number of civilian killings committed under their command (e.g. Generals Lasprilla, Rodríguez Clavijo, and Montoya, and Colonel Mejia) received significantly more U.S. training, on average, than other officers during this period. Officers with in‐depth U.S. training are more likely to rise in rank, and similarly, those who are on the rise are more likely to have access to U.S. training opportunities. This suggests that measuring success of training by the ascendance of officers does not measure human rights performance, and that with an institution with a poor human rights record, such measurements are likely to exacerbate an existing problem.

Beyond a Sub‐national Analysis: Disproportionate Aid to a Problematic Army

An analysis of military assistance and human rights in only one nation does not account for the priority assigned by the United States to assisting one nation relative to another nation, and these nations’ respective human rights records. Within Latin America, the United States conducted an extremely high level of U.S. military training for Colombia, compared with the rest of Latin America or the world. Between 1999 and 2012, Colombians accounted for 41.7% of all Latin Americans receiving U.S. military training, but only 7.9% of the region’s population.86

U.S. human rights violations in the Middle East, U.S. human rights violations, such as such as at Abu Ghraib, set a poor example for at Abu Ghraib, set a poor example Colombians, according to one U.S. military for Colombians, according to a U.S. instructor. “I talked to Colombian officers military instructor. who’ve said, ‘Some of your people really disappointed us because you were kind of our heroes, who really stood up for human rights, told the Argentines to go fly a kite with the policies that it’s okay to kill civilians. We’re kind of disappointed in you based on what we’ve seen in the Middle East.’”87

“In 2003 when they kidnap the three Americans, there’s a directive to sync our aid to their strategy, to match it up.”88 This, according to the official, is what led to the expanded geography of units receiving U.S. assistance from 2003 to 2007.

25 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

The shift in priority from producing combat deaths to capturing or demobilizing guerrillas may have been applied more to the Army than to the Air Force, however, and the United States actively promoted the High Value Target strategy that prioritized killing guerrilla leaders over capturing or demobilizing them. “The use of what are known as intelligent weapons [provided by the U.S.] …eliminated the use of wide area bombing that made more noise than caused deaths,” a Colombian general said [emphasis added].89

Why did reported extrajudicial executions decline after 2007?

There is consensus among policymakers, civil society representatives and media that the number of extrajudicial killings committed by the Army decreased markedly after 2007. The following graph of reported executions by month shows the trajectory:

3 Chat: Reported Executions by Colombian Armed Forces by Month 2000‐2010

Reported Executions by Colombian Armed Forces by Month 2000‐2010 180

160 Gen. Montoya 140 assumes Army command 120 Soacha 100 scandal

80 President Uribe President 60 Santos executions/month

of 40 # Directive 300‐28 20 Directiva 29 prioritizes captures issued, rewards over kills 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Month and year deaths occurred

Source: Consolidated database of extrajudicial killings, with data compiled from the Attorney General’s Office and non‐ governmental sources. Why did the number of executions fall so dramatically after 2007? Evidence indicates that diverse pressures ‐ from civil society, pressure from international actors, most prominently the UNHCHR, and finally the willingness of civilians within the Uribe administration to engage with the Army over this practice ‐ were key to changing an institutional environment that sanctioned, if not encouraged, extrajudicial killings.

26 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE 1) Civil Society Pressure, Media, and the False Positives Scandal

Over the course of late 2007 and 2008, 16 young men from the town of Soacha, a poor city on the outskirts of Bogotá, were lured to leave their homes with false promises of work in other parts of the country. They were then transported more than 300 miles away where they were killed and their corpses were presented as those of guerrillas killed in combat, in the practice known as “false positives.”90 While human rights organizations had pressured the Colombian government since the 1980s91 on the issue of extrajudicial killings, it was not until the Soacha scandal broke in September 2008 that the discussion of extrajudicial killings entered Colombia’s mainstream.

Beginning in 2006, Colombian human rights NGOs launched a concerted effort, presenting evidence of 98 extrajudicial hearings at a hearing of the Inter‐American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in October 2006.92 Organizations in Antioquia published a report the following March on 38 executions in eastern Antioquia, where the practice was especially pervasive, and urged United Nations officials to respond.93

A working group with representatives of human rights organizations was convened, and this group documented cases of extrajudicial killings.94 Led by CCEEU, the organizations brought together a small group of human rights professionals from the United States and European countries for an observation mission on extrajudicial killings October 4‐7, 2007, which produced an initial report.95 The CCEEU working group again presented evidence on the issue at an IACHR hearing in October 2007.96 All of this documentation was also given to the OHCHR.

In the context of this mounting NGO and international attention, the Soacha scandal became a watershed moment in generating the political will to stop the practice of extrajudicial killing and to punish those military personnel responsible for the abuses. Other cases also came to light, and press coverage of extrajudicial killings exploded beginning in September 2008 (See Table below). Demonstrations broke out throughout the country, and were capped by a May 1, 2009 demonstration in which thousands marched against extrajudicial killings in Bogotá.97

How did this case come to be in the spotlight? In August, 2008, several mothers began seeing one another repeatedly at the local prosecutors’ office in Soacha. All of them were looking for their sons, between the ages of 18 and 30, who had left home during the previous year either on their way to work or to look for work, and hadn’t been seen again. Day after day, as they sat in the cramped waiting rooms of state judicial officials, they got to know each other. They talked about their sons, how out of character it was for each of them to leave home without any notice, and they became convinced that the same fate had befallen them all.

Despite their increasing unease as to the fate of their sons, they were unsure of how to channel their frustration. They had gone through official channels – the police, the prosecutors’ office – and were getting nowhere, until the media carried their stories. As shown below, press coverage of extrajudicial killings grew exponentially in the 12 months following the revelations about the Soacha case.

27 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Table 3: National Newspapers Coverage of Extrajudicial Executions 2003–2010 (number of articles in national print media mentioning extrajudicial executions) (Salazar, 2011: 411)

Jan Feb March April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Total 2003 1 1 2004 1 1 1 1 4 2005 1 1 2 1 5 2006 9 37651672 55 2007 2 28 6141181 34 2008 8 1 3 311232842432137 2009 23 41119486461761757227 2010 27 10 6 6 1625511824102 4Table 3: National Newspapers Coverage of Extrajudicial Executions 2003–2010

2) Cracks in the Armor: The Colombian Government’s Response to Executions

On October 29, 2008, a little over a month after the revelation of the Soacha scandal in the press, President Uribe suspended 27 military officers because of their roles in the disappearance and subsequent execution of the young men in Soacha.98 Those dismissed included two division and three brigade commanders, and Army commander Mario Montoya resigned shortly thereafter.99 Judicial convictions for several of those directly responsible for the Soacha killings would follow: five soldiers and their commanding officer were sentenced to 52 to 54 years in prison each, received hefty fines, and were found guilty of the crimes of forced disappearance and crimes against humanity.100

Although, apart from the dismissal of Army officers, little judicial action has been taken against army commanders, many saw this administrative action as concrete evidence that committing executions would no longer lead to career advancement for Army officials.101 This represented the highest‐level repudiation of the “body count mentality” long advanced within the Colombian military, which rewarded soldiers with extra pay, vacation, and career advancement in exchange for killing guerrilla fighters.102

Most observers would agree that Uribe’s suspension of members of the military for their participation in extrajudicial killings was an important step towards decreasing its practice and beginning to hold military personnel accountable for their actions, but it is far less clear why Uribe changed his stance. Had the Soacha scandal convinced Uribe that human rights were important? Uribe frequently said publicly that human rights critiques were inspired by guerillas and their sympathizers, and had been hostile to claims of human rights abuses by the Army. Indeed, shortly before he suspended these officers, he had said publicly that the young men from Soacha “were killed in combat, they weren’t going to pick coffee, they went with criminal purposes.”103 Why did he end up changing his response so dramatically in the Soacha case? We suggest three plausible explanations. a. Civilians inside of the Uribe administration became persuaded that executions were a problem within the Army.

28 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE An important change in leadership in the Defense Ministry began to indicate to Army personnel that executions would no longer be tolerated and even encouraged. In July 2006 future president Juan Manuel Santos became the Minister of Defense, and in July the leadership of the Army changed as well, with Freddy Padilla de León assuming the post of Armed Forces Commander. Both of these leadership changes pointed towards a move towards greater respect for human rights and transparency. In 2007, Defense Minister Santos appointed the first‐ever civilian to run the military justice system – Luz Marina Gil. Among her first actions was to propose reforms to the military justice code so that it explicitly recognized that the military justice system did not have jurisdiction over human rights abuses.

Concurrently with these appointments, General Mario Montoya was appointed to the top post in the Colombian army. Compared to Santos and Padilla, Montoya was a more enthusiastic supporter of Uribe’s democratic security policies and known for his hostility to human rights concepts and groups. He had been the commander of the 4th Brigade in Medellín from 2001‐2003, the Army brigade with the highest number of reported extrajudicial killings.

While Montoya generally behaved in a hostile manner towards human rights, he made one decision that would have positive repercussions for deterring executions: after the OHCHR presented 99 cases of extrajudicial killings to the Ministry of Defense in 2007, Montoya invited OHCHR personnel to visit local military commanders to discuss the cases. Defense Ministry officials came to the meetings, and saw that the military’s explanation for these killings didn’t add up. According to several interviewees, this was key in persuading these officials to take a stand against the practice.

b. Change in military strategy

Uribe’s policy of “democratic security” had, in his eyes, made great strides in the first years of his administration. By most accounts, his policies succeeded in militarily weakening the FARC, and security in Bogotá and Medellín had improved. While extrajudicial killings were long used to target leftists within the country, the practice of killing civilians with few political ties, once exposed, began to present both a military and political liability. For democratic security to succeed, popular support for the FARC and other guerrilla groups needed to be eroded and support for and trust in Colombia’s armed forced increased. This public scandal, which inspired public outrage, therefore needed to be presented as an aberration. Santos was frustrated that orders he had given prohibiting the commission of executions were ignored (See below). Taking action against the most prominent cases of false positives became a way to increase legitimacy of the Army, both for domestic and international constituencies.

A reflection of the growing political will to stem false positive killings was the issuance of directives discouraging the practice, especially Directive 300‐28 in November 2007, which prioritized captures and demobilizations over killing of members of illegal armed groups.

29 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Government Decisions related to Extrajudicial Executions 2003– 2010

Number of policy documents, directives or decrees issues by Presidency, Ministry of Defense, or the Colombian Armed Forces related to extrajudicial executions Source: Salazar, 2012: 413 12

10 10

8

6

4

2 2 2 1 1

00 0 0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 5 Chart Government Decisions related to Extrajudicial Executions 2003– 2010

c. International Pressure

Uribe’s dismissal of officers who oversaw the Soacha executions coincided with a visit to Colombia by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2007 and 2008, Colombia also was lobbying intensely for Congressional ratification of the Colombia‐U.S. Free Trade Agreement. As the U.S. Embassy applied pressure to the Government of Colombia to cease the practice of extrajudicial executions, presumably this pressure had increased relevancy given trade talks.104

Christian Salazar, the Director of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2009‐2011 in Colombia, in 2012 published a rare article chronicling the largely internal, usually opaque high‐level negotiations undertaken by the different actors within the Colombian state, the UNHCHR, and several embassies.105 Salazar claims that the UNHCHR played the crucial role in fighting the practice of extrajudicial killings, citing as evidence the UNHCHR’s facilitation of meetings with army brigades, and the physical and political support of civilians in the Defense Ministry who questioned Army officials and pushed for institutional change. He makes a compelling case that these civilians were risking their lives by exposing the practice of executions, and demonstrates that the UNHCHR’s work was key to protecting them.

30 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE 3) The Role of the United States: Mixed Results

The role of the U.S. government was only one part of the diverse pressures exerted to stop extrajudicial killing. Some might make a case that major changes in the US political context were in fact decisive in the key changes that took place after 2007. Two main changes stand out:

First, Democrats’ mid‐term electoral gains in 2006 suddenly gave voice and power to critics of U.S. policy in Colombia. The Colombian government, which had carefully cultivated a close relationship with George W. Bush, was forced to reach across the aisle and take into consideration Democratic‐led human rights concerns, especially as it pressed for ratification of the Free Trade Agreement signed by the two governments in November 2006. Second, the U.S. decreased military aid to Colombia by more than $200 million in 2007, effective in 2008.106

These mixed results highlight the complicated relationships and causal links between U.S. aid and the Colombian government. By disaggregating the different actors and institutional routes through which U.S. and Colombian policymakers interact, we make the explicit call for more fine‐grained analyses that seek to measure how effective different strategies are at promoting positive human rights outcomes.

The evidence in Antioquia suggests that national and international pressure had an impact on the commission of executions at the regional as well as national level. Although human rights groups had denounced extrajudicial executions before 2005, in 2005 and 2006 they and the UN Human Rights Commissioner’s Office began to respond to a pattern of executions in Eastern Antioquia. The year with the highest number of executions directly attributed to the 4th Brigade was 2005, and executions carried out in the 4th Brigade’s jurisdiction would continue to be equally high in 2006, but fell in 2007 (see chart). At the national level, on the other hand, executions continued to increase, reaching their peak in 2007.

Although the State Department’s annual human rights report did not mention execution in Antioquia until 2007,107 we suggest that U.S. pressure on executions in specific regions also can have an impact. The massacre in February 2005 of eight people in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, carried out by members of the 17th Brigade together with paramilitaries, was a point of pressure for certification of U.S. military funding, exercising considerable pressure on the 17th Brigade. Executions directly attributed to the 17th Brigade as well as executions carried out in its jurisdiction peaked in 2005, falling 40% and 46%, respectively, in 2006, and maintaining that level in 2007.

On the other hand, in Huila, where the 9th Brigade had a high level of executions during the period, the number of executions directly denounced as committed by the 9th Brigade more than tripled from 2006 to 2007, and the number of executions continued to increase in the first quarter of 2008. In 2007, family members of victims began to say publicly that their children were not criminals or guerrillas, and the South Colombian Human Rights Observatory published its first report on executions in the second half of 2007.108 But their reports had little echo in the mass media or in advocacy by the UN, and were not referenced in the State Department’s human rights report. It was not until September 2008, when executions fell dramatically at the national level, that they also diminished in Huila.

31 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Reducing Impunity to Reinforce Human Rights Changes109

The U.S. played a key role in two changes in the judicial system. If decreasing impunity is important to deterring executions, we must consider the United States’ role in both advancing and frustrating the provision of justice for these crimes in Colombia. The United States gave substantial material support to the Fiscalía’s Human Rights Unit, which made significant judicial advances in prosecuting executions by 2013.110 On the other hand, the United States was also key in funding and supporting the implementation of the new accusatory justice system, which has had very poor results in prosecuting those responsible for committing executions.

Data on judicial stages gathered in 2009 and 2013 demonstrates that while a majority of cases remain in impunity, there have been significant improvements during this time in the rates of judicial advancement, especially in those cases under Law 600 that the National Human Rights Unit (NHRU) of the Fiscalía is processing.

For family members of victims of extrajudicial killings, opinions vary widely on how productive it is to pursue formal justice from the state. One key question is whether the provision of justice in fact deters the commission of additional crimes. The empirical evidence from scholars gives us further insight into this claim.

The classical conception of law and punishment assumes that people are rational and act with free will, and that legal punishment would make it less likely that rational people would commit crime. US‐based criminologists have presented extensive empirical evidence that crime is deterred when people expect to get caught and legally prosecuted.111 Recent literature in political science has analyzed whether trials for human rights abuses, or the threat of them, can have a deterrent effect on the commission of human rights abuses. Kathryn Sikkink’s 2011 work analyzes how human rights trials affect repression in countries that have undergone significant transitions in their government and politics. 112 She shows that human rights trials of leaders following repressive regimes lead to lower levels of grave human rights violations. She also shows that domestic trials – rather than foreign or international trials – make up the majority of trials (53%), and argues that increasingly the struggle over impunity is playing out in domestic courts. Sikkink argues that holding individual members of the state criminally responsible deters violence through a combination of deterrence and socialization. In her view, embedding the norm of criminal accountability within institutions “alters the strategic game for key actors because it imposes new costs on those individuals who violate human rights” (ibid., 231).

Justice and Impunity in Cases of Extrajudicial Killings

In Colombia, it is rare that state officials have been punished for committing even the most grave human rights abuses. Even in the face of intense domestic and international political pressure, Colombia’s courts have not punished state agents responsible for some of the best‐known and most heinous human rights abuses.113 Has the Colombian justice system been more effective in punishing state agents responsible for extrajudicial killings than other crimes? The empirical evidence we present here demonstrates that while the majority of cases of executions remain in impunity, there has been a significant increase in the numbers of judicial advances both relative to the provision of justice in other crimes, and relative to the status of these cases in 2009, as illustrated in Appendix 4.

32 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE In 2009, only five percent of more than 1,300 extrajudicial killings registered by the National Human Rights Unit since 2000 (NHRU)114 had proceeded to indictment or further, and 78% of these more than 1,300 cases of extrajudicial killings registered by the National Human Rights Unit since 2000 (NHRU) had not proceeded past the initial reporting phase. In this 78% of cases, no measurable judicial action had been taken beyond assigning the cases to the NHRU, and there was no evidence of active investigation. By 2013, 19 percent of cases had proceeded past indictment, and almost half – 49% ‐ of just over 3,000 cases showed judicial advances. In both years, however, the percentage of cases actually sentenced was minimal – one percent in 2009, and seven percent in 2013. (see Appendix 4)

The poor results of judicial advances under the new, accusatory system that was promoted by the United States – known as Law 906 – compared to results under the old written system (Law 600) cannot be explained by the fact that Law 906 executions are more recent, and have had less time to advance. Instead, the judicial progress rates for cases mirror trends in the commission of executions.

On the other hand, U.S. support for the NHRU has yielded better results than in those cases processed by state judicial offices (seccionales). While the seccionales have had significant advances in the investigatory stage, overall the NHRU has been much more successful in bringing cases to trial and obtaining sentences. Most documented cases of extrajudicial killings – 78% ‐ are being investigated by the NHRU. (see Appendix 4)

Regional Case Studies

Huila Department

In Huila Department, 319 victims of extrajudicial executions have been documented by the Attorney General’s office and human rights organizations, 263 of them between 2004 and 2009. The courts have not tried or sentenced those responsible in 95% of those killings, which remain in impunity.

The Army’s Ninth Brigade operates in the southern department of Huila, and is composed of five combat battalions, training and support battalions, and an anti‐kidnapping unit. Two battalions of the Ninth Brigade – the Magdalena and the Pigoanza – were responsible for the large majority of executions reportedly committed by brigade soldiers, while very few are attributed to other battalions operating in Huila.

Executions in Huila were concentrated in the years 2006‐2008 – two of every three killings reported occurred during these three years, 30% of them in 2007 alone. That is consistent with the national pattern, but with an even greater concentration in this period. At the national level, some observers suggest that the influence of Army Commander General Mario Montoya and of his strategy to measure success by the number of enemy kills was responsible for the growth of executions and false positives between March 2006 and November 2008, when he was commander.

Responsibilities for increases and decreases in executions are not the same at different levels of command. Those at the top normally pressure for results, without necessarily specifying how to obtain those results (and in some cases without investigating unusual results). With more than 3,000 men under their command, the chiefs of territorial brigades 33 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

can be in this position, while battalion commanders have more operational functions, and are located physically closer to combat and incidents of human rights abuses. If there is a culture of abuse in the battalions, a brigade commander would have to act proactively against it in order to undermine a dynamic that may be entrenched both at higher levels and in the field. 6 Map: Extrajudicial executions by municipality in Huila, 2000‐2010 Looked at this way, we might speculate that the power of a brigade commander to stop executions by the Magdalena and Pigoanza battalions was circumscribed. Perhaps, when Colonel Jaime Lasprilla Villamizar arrived as commander of the Ninth Brigade in Neiva in mid‐2006, after a year abroad, he was limited in the space available to him to know of and end the executions by battalions in southern Huila. At that point, these two battalions had reported committed 13 executions in the two previous years in southern Huila.

But the statistics on executions suggest another story. In the first half of 2006, before Lasprilla arrived, there were six executions reportedly committed by the Ninth Brigade – one a month. In the second half of 2006, there were 12 executions reportedly committed by the brigade’s soldiers, and in 2007 up to November 17 (when Lasprilla left the brigade), there were 63 executions reportedly committed by the brigade: more than six killings per month.

The commanders of the Magdalena and Pigoanza battalions that were responsible for the large majority of these killings did not precede Lasprilla. One of them, Lt. Col. Carlos Salamanca, arrived as commander of the Magdalena shortly after Lasprilla, in mid‐2006, and left at the same time as Lasprilla in November 2007.

Although Huila illustrates the pattern of “false positives” in which a civilian is claimed as a guerrilla killed in combat, there are also cases in which soldiers said that criminals or thieves were caught in the act, which supposedly led to an exchange of gunfire. We asked whether many killings were of guerrilla militia members, killed outside of combat – it would still constitute an extrajudicial killing – but investigators, journalists, and attorneys familiar with many cases told us that although there were some cases of this, they represent a small minority of the total.

Huila also experienced mass arrests of hundreds of people by the armed forces, especially between 2002 and 2004, accused of links with terrorist groups, and the large majority were released for lack of evidence. Some people have suggested that the arrests of these people were a prelude to their subsequent murder. The arrests were concentrated in municipalities bordering Caquetá Department, such as Algeciras, where there were 11 reported extrajudicial killings in 2004‐2006.

Some military observers have suggested a causal relationship between the amount of combat or war violence and number of extrajudicial killings reported in Colombia. To test this thesis in Huila, we examined combat data and found that more than two out of every three executions reported in Huila – 69% ‐ occurred more than 30 days after the most recent combat event reported in the same municipality. And only 13% of these killings occurred within eight days after a combat in the same municipality, suggesting that executions were not occurring in the context of combat or the “fog of war.”

34 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE .

This dynamic changed over time. In 2000‐2002, 14 of the 19 executions reported occurred on the same day as combat in the same municipality. Later, in the year with the highest number of executions reported – 2007 – 82% of the 68 killings recorded during the year happened more than 30 days after the most recent combat event in the municipality.

35 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

During the later period, if combat was producing a blind desire for revenge leading soldiers to kill more civilians, this effect of combat was delayed, at the least.

The same phenomenon is seen in executions attributed to paramilitary groups in Huila, 60% of which occurred more than 30 days after combat in the same municipality. Similarly, the average time between combat and paramilitary killing grew over the course of the decade. That is, the thesis that executions committed by paramilitaries were acts of revenge for guerrilla attacks is also not supported by this data.

Army Commanders in Huila and U.S. Training Command staff and several units of the Ninth Brigade were approved for U.S. assistance for several years (2005‐2009), and at least one battalion received assistance in 2011. The brigade had use of helicopters made available under Plan Colombia at least in 2006 (data on helicopters for other years is not available). The brigade operated on the geographic periphery of the central focus of U.S. assistance to Task Force Omega (made up of more than ten mobile brigades).

U.S. military training, especially at WHINSEC, is practically a required step for the promotion of a Colombian Army officer, and this has been the case for commanders of the Ninth Brigade and its sub‐units, but some officers received more extensive U.S. training. Gilberto Rocha Ayala commanded the brigade in 2002 after serving as an instructor at the School of Americas for a year in 1995‐96. Héctor Martínez Espinel, commander in 2003‐04, was an SOA instructor in 1994‐95. Juan Pablo Rodríguez Barragán took the command and general staff course in Fort Benning in 2001, before assuming command of the brigade for a period in 2004.

During Col. Lasprilla Villamizar’s command from July 2006 to November 2007, the Ninth Brigade’s command staff and three battalions were approved and received U.S. assistance. Lasprilla had just completed courses at the National Defense University in Washington from August 2005 to June 2006. From 2002 to 2003, then Lt. Col. Lasprilla was an instructor at WHINSEC, where he had previously been as a student as a cadet. In other words, he had extensive U.S. military training, much of it recent when he assumed command in Neiva.

During the period of Lasprilla Villamizar’s command of the Ninth Brigade, there are reports of 75 civilian killings, attributed by witnesses or investigators to brigade solders. After his time in Huila, Lasprilla was promoted to brigadier general and became commander of Joint Task Force Omega, which has been a particular focus of U.S. assistance. Last September, Lasprilla was appointed commander of Colombia’s Joint Special Operations Command, a unit that has received – and probably continues to receive – U.S. assistance.

Efficacy of Justice System and Rates of Impunity According to data provided by the Fiscalía, of 190 executions recorded in Huila by the Fiscalía, 77% of the investigations were in preliminary stages as of September 2013. For only eight executions had the process reached trial or sentencing – that is, for only 4% of the cases. The average time that has passed since the killings and this state of affairs is seven years.

36 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Moreover, for five of the eight killings that reached trial, which had been grouped together in a single process, only one soldier was convicted and six were acquitted. For these five killings, the court apparently recognized military culpability, but the conviction of just one soldier suggests that other soldiers involved were not brought to justice.

At the national level, the Fiscalía has made more progress on cases of extrajudicial killings: 6.3% have reached sentencing, and 46% remain in preliminary investigation.

Very little national and international attention has been focused on executions in Huila, and the Ninth Brigade appears to be a “Teflon” unit with few investigations moving forward. To the point that, one of the few convictions of members of the Magdalena Battalion was handled by a prosecutor from another department, for a killing committed in Antioquia, outside the brigade’s jurisdiction.

Arauca Department

In the oil‐rich, conflictive department of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela, the 18th Brigade and the Fifth Mobile Brigade both operate.

The 18th Brigade was an important focus of U.S. assistance until 2008. Even during the presidency of Andrés Pastrana (1998‐2002), the United States spent six million dollars to train 18th Brigade soldiers.115 Assistance increased in 2002, when the authority for assistance was extended beyond counter‐narcotics aid. That year, Congress approved $98 million of assistance for the Infrastructure Security Strategy (ISS), that was programmed for 2003 and 2004, principally to protect the Coveñas‐Caño Limón oil pipeline: $71 million for ten helicopters; $15.4 million to train troops; and $12.7 million to equip the 18th Brigade. Seventy U.S. trainers worked in Arauca while the program lasted. The delivery of helicopters and other equipment was delayed, much of it not arriving until mid‐ to late‐ 2005.116 The command staff and four counter‐guerrilla battalions of the Fifth Mobile Brigade, with operations in Tame municipality, also received U.S. assistance at least from 2003 until 2009.117

From December 2002 to April 2003, seventy U.S. trainers of the 7th Special Forces Group and the 4th Psychological Operations Group were in Saravena and Arauca City, training 900 troops in light infantry tactics at a cost of $9 million.118 U.S. trainers returned to Arauca in 2004 and 2005 to train smaller groups of soldiers from the 18th Brigade and 5th Mobile Brigade, including courses on “narco‐terrorist organization.”119 By 2008, the resources of ISS had been spent, and that year, the United States ended direct assistance to the 18th Brigade.

The commander of the “Revéiz Pizarro” Mechanized Group #18 in Saravena when the U.S. military was training soldiers there in early 2003 was Col. Santiago Herrera. He would have been the officer in Arauca most exposed to the methods and attitudes of U.S. special forces, but they do not appear to have had a positive influence during the period of “false positive” killings. Four years later, Herrera became commander of the 15th Mobile Brigade in North Santander department, a unit involved in the killing of young men in Soacha and many other false positives. He was dismissed in October 2008, together with two other colonels from the brigade.120

37 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

7 Map: Extrajudicial executions by municipality in Arauca, 2000‐2010

The trajectory of executions carried out by the Army in Arauca follows almost the same pattern as the rest of the country: after few executions in 2000 and 2001, the problem grew worse in 2002, to 16 reported executions, growing each year until 2005, when 23 executions were reported. After a slight decline in 2006, the number of executions shot up to 45 in 2007, fell to 12 in 2008, and in 2009‐2010 returned to the rates of 2000‐2001. In the majority of these homicides, a responsible unit was not identified, although all of them were attributed to members of the armed forces.

In 2004, the 18th Brigade became a focus of attention for human rights and labor organizations, as well as the U.S. Embassy, after troops from the “Revéiz Pizarro” Group of the 18th Brigade murdered three trade unionists in Saravena on August 4, a prominent case in the certification of human rights by the United States for the release of a portion of

38 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE military assistance. The commander of the “Revéiz Pizarro” Group at the time was Col. Luis Francisco Medina Corredor. Four soldiers from the unit were sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2007. In July of the following year, when Medina Corredor was commander of the Special Forces Brigade, the United States briefly suspended assistance to that brigade until Medina was barred from public service because of his role in the murders.121

Paramilitary Role in Arauca An analysis of executions committed by the armed forces in Arauca from 2000 to 2010 must A U.S. military trainer said in 2003, take into account the role played by paramilitary “the paramilitaries are bad guys, troops that carried out many killings in the but they’re good bad guys.” department. “While in the rest of the country the levels of violence began to decline, because the paramilitary and guerrilla expansion had begun earlier, in 1997, and by 2001 there were already territories dominated by a sole armed group,” according to Nuevo Arco Iris, “in Arauca it was only in 2001 that the level of violence began to grow.”122 In August of that year a thousand paramilitaries began operating in Arauca, entering from Casanare department.123

The worst acts of violence carried out by the paramilitaries in Arauca include the massacre of 20 people in Cravo Norte in March 2004 and the massacre of 11 peasants in Tame in May 2003. Three months later, the department’s paramilitary commander agreed to demobilize his troops. The massacre in Tame coincided, according to the Joel Sierra Foundation, with an operation by the 18th Brigade and 5th Mobile Brigade,124 one month after a U.S. military training course in Saravena and Arauca City.125

U.S. military and U.S. embassy reports show that, although the State Department had declared the paramilitary AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) a terrorist organization in 2001, the repression of the paramilitary’s violent actions was not on the agenda either of the U.S. political leadership or of the U.S. soldiers who came to support the Colombian armed forces. As one U.S. military trainer said in 2003, “the paramilitaries are bad guys, but they’re good bad guys.”126 Expressed another way, a U.S. soldier working in Tolemaida said, “The State Department wants to eradicate coca. We want to kill the bad guys.”127

Meta/Guaviare

The identification of causal factors of extrajudicial executions in Meta and Guaviare Departments faces several complications. The Fiscalía is investigating the killings of 239 identified persons in Meta killed between 2000 and 2010. The Fiscalía’s National Human Rights Unit is investigating the deaths of 178 persons during the same period in Meta who are not identified.128 Human rights organizations have denounced another 93 killings of identified persons by the armed forces during the same period in Meta that the Fiscalía is not investigating.

In Guaviare, the National Human Rights Unit of the Fiscalía is investigating killings by the armed forces of 48 persons, 10 of whom are not identified, while human rights organizations have documented the killing of another 14 identified persons.

39 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

40 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE In Guaviare, the National Human Rights Unit of the Fiscalía is investigating killings by the armed forces of 48 persons, 10 of whom are not identified, while human rights organizations have documented the killing of another 14 identified persons.

Yet cemeteries in Meta and Guaviare contain the remains of more than 2,300 persons who were unidentified (NNs) at the time of burial. Only 782 of these were identified, as of April 2013. It is not known how many of even the people whose remains have been identified were killed by the armed forces or by illegal armed groups, and how many were killed in combat or outside of combat. The Orlando Fals Collective has located the families of 35 victims who were buried in these cemeteries as NNs, and based on interviews concluded that none of them were combatants. But the number of victims of extrajudicial killings among these 2,300‐plus remains is unknown, and so is the total number of such killings by the Army in Meta and Guaviare.129

In addition, multiple units operate in the two departments, including a territorial brigade (7th), and nine mobile brigades. Mobile Brigades (BRIMs) 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 16, 17, and 18 operate in Meta and Guaviare. BRIMs 1, 2, 3 and 10 were part of the Rapid Deployment Force based in La Macarena and Uribe, Meta. The 7th Brigade received very little U.S. assistance, while all of the mobile brigades were part of Joint Task Force Omega that has been a focus of U.S. assistance since 2004.

One factor complicating the documentation of extrajudicial killings in Meta and Guaviare is the moving of bodies of unidentified persons reportedly killed in combat by the armed forces, from one municipality to another. This was accomplished with helicopters used by Joint Task Force Omega that were supplied, armed, and fueled using U.S. assistance.

41 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

8 Map: Extrajudicial executions by municipality in Meta & Guaviare, 2000‐2010 Conclusions and Recommendations to U.S. Policymakers

1. Legislators should require that U.S. security assistance be subject to rigorous assessment in order to evaluate the outcomes of such spending. As part of this effort, Congress should provide the mandate and resources needed to fully and independently evaluate the human rights outcomes of security assistance.

2. Inputs to help assess human rights outcomes must be solicited from outside the security assistance bureaucracy. Such inputs are key to providing external perspective to assessments, as well as data and insights not easily available to government officials. Human rights organizations in many cases have extensive historical and current information on human rights conditions and abuses that shed light on and complement knowledge available to those involved in military assistance programs.

3. Policymakers, training managers and critics should not accept at face value “assumed wisdom” about military assistance. Honest evaluation of military assistance can yield significant and surprising lessons on the impacts of such programs.

4. The United States must monitor the assignments and human rights performance of officers, soldiers, and units after they receive U.S. assistance. The Department of Defense is currently responsible for the monitoring of non‐U.S. students after they receive military training through the IMET program. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency maintains a database of approximately 90,000 IMET trainees.130 Such required monitoring should be expanded to other military assistance programs.

5. Special attention should be directed to outcomes of assistance to units with histories of gross human rights abuses (that occur before or after assistance is given). When Leahy Law vetting was not applied adequately, it is important to look back at how assistance impacted units with abusive histories. Where serious abuses occurred after training or other assistance was given, it is crucial to understand whether or not increased capacity resulting from assistance impacted the commission of abuses, and to draw lessons for the future.

6. The conduct of recipients of training assistance – not their professional success or rise to “important positions” – should be the measure of success in human rights outcomes. This is because, in nations with systemic human rights problems, officers are sometimes rewarded for operations or campaigns that include serious human rights violations. The “important positions” metric can thus perversely lead to positive evaluations of human rights violations.

7. Human rights performance by recipients of all assistance must be a fundamental metric for evaluating the results of such assistance. Too often, respect for human rights is relegated to lower importance, well below the military success of recipients in subduing adversaries. Assessments of impact commonly focus on anti‐drug and counter‐terrorist objectives, not human rights objectives.131

8. Systematic information about the prosecution of government officials for the commission of human rights abuses should be gathered, and the rates of impunity should be considered an important human rights indicator.

42 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE

9. Intelligence assistance – both intelligence products as well as capacities – should be considered part of assistance that is evaluated for human rights outcomes. Intelligence – information that supports operational decisions ‐ is critical for legitimate law enforcement and military operations. But when soldiers or police commit serious human rights abuses, intelligence or the means used to gather it are also frequently key ingredients. Evaluations of the human rights outcomes of assistance should include reviews of how U.S.‐provided intelligence, equipment, and techniques for gathering intelligence were put to use and how these impacted respect for human rights.

10. In order to benefit from input into evaluation from diverse stakeholders, information identifying the recipients of military assistance should be declassified, unless specific information demonstrates serious risks from disclosure.

43 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Appendix 1: Methodological Notes and Sources

Our methodology is both qualitative and quantitative. We have reviewed the literature on security assistance and human rights, as well as U.S. assistance specifically in Colombia, and conducted more than 50 interviews with family members of victims of executions, researchers, human rights defenders, journalists, and military officers.

We chose extrajudicial executions as the violation on which to focus and the human rights outcome to measure. Extrajudicial killings are violations of the most fundamental human right: the right to life. As homicides, they tend to be counted more readily than violations such as forced disappearance, and identification of the perpetrator is usually more easily established than for other serious violations, such as forced displacement. Some crimes, such as rape and torture, are more under‐reported than homicides.

We focus this study on the Colombian Army, rather than other branches of the Colombian security forces, for several reasons. U.S. assistance focused heavily on the Army during the 2000‐2010 period when U.S. aid was both substantial and sustained. The Army is the largest branch of the Colombian armed forces, and assistance to the Army and its officers was more easily tracked than was aid to other branches. Human rights abuses by Army personnel were extensive and well documented during the period, making possible a detailed review of the relationship, or lack thereof, between assistance and abuses.

Since 2009, the lists of Colombian units that received U.S. assistance have been classified; the same is true of names of Colombian officers trained at WHINSEC since 2004. In this study, we compensated for this gap in data about U.S. assistance by drawing on interviews with Colombian and U.S. officials, informal requests for documentation, and formal requests for data from both the Colombian and U.S. governments.

We obtained official data on executions under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office, and combined these with a database carefully compiled by the Coordinación Colombia‐Europa‐Estados Unidos (CCEEU) and its member human rights organizations. In addition, we drew on the following data to construct a quantitative analysis:  Database of homicides carried out by members of the armed forces against persons outside of combat, reported by Fiscalía regional offices and the National Human Rights Unit in 2013, as well as by human rights organizations in CCEEU, for all years, including name of victim, date, municipality, judicial stage, crime. The database contains 6,856 cases with victims’ names, 5,763 of which occurred from 2000 to 2010.  Lists of Colombian military units that received U.S. assistance from 2000 to 2007, and those that were approved to receive assistance in 2008‐2010.  Lists of Colombian military officers that received U.S. training at School of Americas and Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, through 2004 (10,104 names); Naval Postgraduate School (60 names, to 2012); U.S. Air Force schools (more than 2,000 names, to 2009); National War College (14 names, to 2008); West Point (5 names); Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (61 names, to 2012).  Jurisdiction of Army brigades, by municipality and year, from 2000 to 2010  Database of Colombian Army officers from public sources, indicating name, rank, unit, position, and dates of position or command, including commanders of all units battalion‐level and above from 2007 through 2010.

44 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE  A database of extrajudicial executions investigated by the National Human Rights Unit of the Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalía) in 2009.  Database of 2,110 extrajudicial executions during any year, in which a unit of the Colombian armed forces responsible for the killing was identified, drawn from Deuda con la Humanidad published by the Center for Research and Popular Education, CINEP (2011), as well as data from the Fiscalía, press sources, and other Coordinación member groups.

We also obtained data on: • Combat incidents for five departments (Meta, Guaviare, Arauca, Antioquia, Huila) • Forced disappearances by year and municipality • Executions committed by paramilitary groups in five departments (Meta, Guaviare, Arauca, Antioquia, Huila) • Numbers of members of illegal armed groups killed, captured, and demobilized as a result of Army operations, aggregated nationally from 2000 to 2010, and by year and battalion in 2010.

We requested, but did not obtain, unit‐level data on Colombian army operational results, including enemy casualties.

For extrajudicial executions reported at the national level, the Fiscalía provided, in response to a formal request, documents that list all cases of homicides committed by members of the armed forces that are under investigation both by regional offices and special units, as well as the National Human Rights Unit. This information was combined with data compiled by the Extrajudicial Executions Working Group of the Coordination Colombia‐Europe‐United States. We undertook an extensive job of de‐duplicating these consolidated lists, and winnowing the information of errors.

For information on U.S. courses and training provided to Colombian Army officers, we have compiled data from responses to FOIA requests to the U.S. Army and Air Force and direct requests to the military schools. Data on units assisted by the United States was drawn from lists compiled by the State Department, annually published reports on foreign military training, interviews with U.S. and Colombian officers, and a literature review. Interviews with Colombian officers and U.S. officials were especially valuable for understanding U.S. assistance in Colombia, the dynamics of power and command in the Army, and abuses carried out by some members of the military.

In Huila, the South Colombian Human Rights and Violence Observatory, which has been a pioneer of such documentation in the department, gave access to documentation and human sources. In Antioquia, the Corporación Jurídica Libertad provided information about extrajudicial executions they have documented. The Joel Sierra Human Rights Committee, Minga, and Humanidad Vigente assisted with information on violations in Arauca. In Meta and Guaviare, the Center for Popular Research and Education (CINEP) and others offered extensive insights and information. We also spoke with judicial investigators in different parts of the country.

For information on combat events and executions committed by paramilitary groups, CINEP provided data for the departments of Antioquia, Arauca, Guaviare, Huila, and Meta.

45 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

The statistical analysis drew upon data on the presence of guerrilla and paramilitary groups and the military balance between state and illegal forces in municipalities by year, compiled by CERAC.

John Lindsay‐Poland was coordinator and lead author of this report. Janice Gallagher wrote the sections on the decline in false positives and judicial progress. The CCEEU staff reviewed the database and made important corrections. We also thank the following individuals for input and advice regarding statistical analysis for this report: Lucia Chiappara; Casey Delehanty; Emiliano Huet‐Vaughn; Tomas Monnarez‐Palma; Will Moore; Gitanjali Shukla; and Ryan Welch. Other individuals did extensive data entry and de‐ duplication, while Camice Revier assisted with data processing. Douglas Mackey and a Colombian colleague created the maps. The study was supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

While many hands contributed to this project, the Fellowship of Reconciliation assumes full responsibility for all the content and conclusions in the report.

46 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Appendix 2: Statistical Analysis of U.S. Aid and Executions Attributed to Brigades

The analysis done uses an unbalanced brigade‐year panel to estimate the relationship between U.S. military aid and extrajudicial executions for which a unit was identified, in the two years following the year of aid. The data covers years 2004‐2010 and the regression results presented in the table make use of standard errors clustered at the brigade level (for 48 total territorial and mobile brigades). All results include brigade fixed effects in order to control for time‐invariant brigade characteristics that may be correlated with extrajudicial executions, as well as, either a linear time trend or year fixed effects, which control for extrajudicial execution levels common to all brigades in a given year.

The table below presents results for two alternative measures of U.S. military aid. In columns 1 and 2 an aid index is used indicating a low, medium, or high level of US military aid. In both columns there is evidence of a weakly significant positive relationship between extrajudicial executions and the mid‐level range of U.S. military aid, while there is no evidence that receiving aid at the highest level is correlated with higher execution counts than receiving the lowest level of aid.

In columns 3 and 4, an alternative measure of U.S. aid is used, namely, the fraction of battalions in the brigade that received U.S. aid and training in a given year. In these specifications there is weakly significant evidence that increased US aid diffusion throughout a brigade is associated with increases in extrajudicial executions.

From the table we can see Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates of an additional nine to ten extrajudicial executions associated with brigades in the two years following years of mid‐range aid, compared to those in the bottom tier of the aid index. Using the alternative “aid diffusion” measure of U.S. military aid, we see estimates of just approximately five additional extrajudicial executions per year associated with brigades following years when all of their battalions received U.S. assistance, compared to those with no or few battalions receiving such support.

Table 4: U.S. Military Aid and Extrajudicial Executions (OLS estimates)

(1) (2) (3) (4) 10.66** 9.564** Mid-Range Aid Index (4.595) (4.011) 1.708 -2.764 High-Range Aid Index (3.724) (2.983) 11.78** 9.586** Aid Diffusion (4.863) (4.512) Brigade Fixed Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Linear Time Trend Yes No Yes No Year Fixed Effects No Yes No Yes Number of Observations 215 215 214 214

Notes: Dependent variable in all columns is the number of extrajudicial executions. Robust standard errors clustered at the brigade level are shown in parentheses. Mid-Range and High-Range Aid Index variables are dummy variables indicating whether the brigade was giving values of 2 or 3, respectively, in the US Aid scale for the year in question (the left out category is a value of 1 in the index). The Aid diffusion variable represents the fraction of battalions in the brigade that were trained or received US funding in the year. *p < 0.10, **p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01

47 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Appendix 3: Bibliography and Literature Review

Amnesty International‐USA and Fellowship of Reconciliation, “Assisting Units that Commit Extrajudicial Executions: A Call to Investigate U.S. Military Policy Toward Colombia,” April 2008. Horace A. Bartilow and Kihong Eom, 2009, “Busting Drugs While Paying with Crime: The Collateral Damage of U.S. Drug Enforcement in Foreign Countries,” Foreign Policy Analysis (5), 93‐116. Ruth Blakeley, 2006, “Still Training to Torture?: US Training of Military Forces from Latin America,” Third World Quarterly (27), 1439‐1461. Christian Davenport, 1996, “The Weight of the Past: Exploring Lagged Determinants of Political Repression,” Political Research Quarterly (49), 377‐403. Oeindrila Dube and Suresh Naidu, “Bases, Bullets and Ballots: The Effect of U.S. Military Aid on Political Conflict in Colombia,” Center for Global Development, Working Paper No. 197 (January 2010). Paola Fajardo‐Heyward, “Easy Money: Military Assistance and Governments’ Human Rights Practices,” unpublished, 2010. Fellowship of Reconciliation and U.S. Office on Colombia, Military Aid and Human Rights: Colombia, U.S. Accountability, and Global Implications, 2010. Steven E. Finkel, Aníbal Pérez‐Liñán, Mitchell A. Seligson, and C. Neal Tate, Deepening Our Understanding of the Effects of US Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building, USAID, Vanderbilt University, University of Pittsburgh, Latin American Public Opinion Project, 2008. Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Tamy Guberek, Daniel Guzmán, Megan Price, Kristian Lum, and Patrick Ball, To Count the Uncounted: An Estimation of Lethal Violence in Casanare, Palo Alto, CA: Benetech, 2010. Martha K. Huggins, Political Policing: The United States and Latin America, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Seth G. Jones, et. al., Securing Tyrants or Fostering Reform? U.S. Internal Assistance to Repressive and Transitioning Regimes, Rand National Security Research Division, 2006. David J. Louscher and Michael D. Salomone, Marketing Security Assistance: New Perspectives on Arms Sales, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987. Chris L. Lukasevich, “U.S. Training and Advisory Assistance to the Armed Forces of El Salvador from 1981‐1991 and the Resulting Decline in Human Rights Abuses: The Role of U.S. Army Special Forces,” unpublished paper, May 2002. Michael McClintock, The American Connection, London: Zed Books, 1985. ______, Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counter‐insurgency, Counter‐terrorism, 1940‐1990, New York: Pantheon, 1992. Katherine E. McCoy, “Trained to Torture?: The Human Rights of Military Training at the School of the Americas,” Latin American Perspectives, 32 (2005), 47‐64. José Merino, “Los operativos conjuntos y la tasa de homicidios: Una medición,” Nexos, June 2011, pp. 47‐50. Dursun Peksen, 2009, “Better or Worse? The Effect of Economic Sanctions on Human Rights,” Journal of Peace Research (46), 59‐77. Patrick M. Regan, 1995, “U.S. Economic Aid and Political Repression: An Empirical

48 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Evaluation of U.S. Foreign Policy,” Political Research Quarterly (48), 613‐628. David L. Richards, Ronald D. Gelleny, and David H. Sacko, 2001, “Money with a Mean Streak? Foreign Economic Penetration and Government Respect for Human Rights in Developing Countries,” International Studies Quarterly (45), 219‐239. Christian Salazar Volkmann, “Evaluating the Impact of Human Rights Work Work: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Reduction of Extrajudicial Executions in Colombia,” Journal of Human Rights Practice, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2012, pp. 396–460. Fernando Sarmiento, “La muerte tiene permiso,” Nexos, January 2011. Lars Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. Winifred Tate, Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia (Berkeley: University of California), 2007. Winifred Tate, “Human Rights Law and Military Aid Delivery: A Case Study of the Leahy Law,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review, November 2011, Vol. 34, Number 2, pp. 337–354.

Literature Review

Many studies of the relationship between foreign assistance and human rights violations have used cross‐national comparisons to measure human rights as a factor in the allocation of aid, while others measure the impact of economic aid, investment or sanctions on respect for human rights, and do not disaggregate military aid from overall aid (Regan, 1995; Richards, Gelleny and Sacko, 2001; Peksen, 2009).

While these studies illuminate the wide variation in respect for human rights compliance and describe mechanisms and processes through which foreign military assistance is allocated, they are almost exclusively national‐level studies. Very few scholars have examined or analyzed these important variables operate at the subnational level. This is despite the well‐recognized difficulties and uncertainties in making meaningful cross‐ national measurements of foreign military assistance or arms transfers (Louscher and Salomone, 1987).

Huggins (1998) and Jones et. al. (2006) examine the impact of police aid (not aid to militaries) on human rights, but the Jones et. al. study focused primarily on popular perceptions of the security forces after aid was given, not the human rights performance of those forces. Huggins usefully theorized the cycles of human rights impacts of foreign police training, based on a case study of U.S. police assistance to Brazil.

Those who have addressed the human rights impacts of military aid and arms transfers did so at the national level (Schoultz 1981; Davenport 1996). Finkel et. al. (2008) found that “[d]emocracy assistance is less effective in countries that receive a large percentage of U.S. military assistance.” However, since military assistance was measured in dollars, and the dollar value of military assistance resides disproportionately in equipment, especially aircraft and missile systems that are rarely used in the commission of the human rights violations being measured, the applicability of these studies to understanding the dynamics of assistance in impacting human rights abuses is limited.

49 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Several case studies of U.S. assistance and military units’ respect for human rights have adopted a narrower focus than this project proposes. McCoy (2005) examined the impacts of U.S. military training from a specific institution, the U.S. Army School of the Americas, on the number of gross violations committed by individual officers trained, finding that more courses taken at the school correlated with increased probability of abuse. Dube and Naidu (2010) conducted a statistical analysis of combats, voting participation, and paramilitary attacks as dependent variables of military assistance, finding increased paramilitary attacks and reduced voter turnout when military aid rose. Their study did not measure violations committed by assisted units, however, and measured assistance only as a function of the location of Colombian bases, on the premise that the impacts of assistance would be greater near such bases, which is not the case, and without discriminating between those units that received assistance and those that did not.

Lukasevich (2002) reviewed the relationship between the presence of U.S. advisors in diverse departments in El Salvador with atrocities reported in the UN Truth Commission report, and found a positive impact on human rights from the advisors. Sarmiento (2011) and Merino (2011) statistically examined rates of homicides in municipalities and states of Mexico where the army and federal police had been deployed during a period of increased U.S. military assistance, finding a high correlation, but did not explore the relationship of either army deployments or homicides to foreign assistance. Fajardo‐Heyward (2010) argued that external military aid reduces political accountability in Colombia and therefore is a contributor to human rights violations, but did not use objective measures of accountability.

Blakeley (2006) argued that the most appropriate way “of establishing the relationships between the training and repression, … involves assessing the nature of the training within the broader context of US foreign policy.” This was the approach employed by McClintock (1985 and 1992) for counterinsurgency doctrine in Latin America and Southeast Asia; Gill for the School of the Americas; and Huggins, for U.S. police assistance in Brazil. These scholars used qualitative and inductive methods, based on both document reviews and interviews of military trainers and trainees, to investigate specific programs and doctrines. Each of these authors found that the content of training and doctrine reinforced practices that denigrate civilian political opponents, in direct or subtle ways.

50 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Appendix 4: Judicial advancements in charts

9 Charts: Judicial Progress, Attorney General Human Rights Unit, 2009 and 2013

51 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

10 Charts: Judicial progress under Law 600 and Law 906, 2013

52 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE

11 Charts: Judicial progress in National Human Rights Unit vs. State offices, 2013

53 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Appendix 5: Simple Index of U.S. Aid to Colombian Army Brigades, 2000‐2010

2000-03 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 BR-01 low low low low low low low BR-02 low low low low low medium medium BR-03 medium low low low low low low BR-04 low low low low low low low BR-05 low low low low low low low BR-06 low low low low low low medium BR-07 low low low low low low low BR-08 low low low low low low low BR-09 low low medium medium medium medium medium BR-10 n.a. n.a. low low low low low BR-11 low medium low medium medium low low BR-12 medium low medium medium low low low BR-13 low low low low low medium medium BR-14 low low low low low low low BR-15 n.a. n.a. n.a. low low low low BR-16 low low medium medium medium low low BR-17 low low low low low low low BR-18 high high high high high low low BR-22 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. low BR-23 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. low low BR-26 low low low low low medium medium BR-27 low low low low low medium low BR-28 low low low low medium medium medium BR-29 n.a. n.a. n.a. low low low low BR-30 n.a. n.a. n.a. medium medium low low BRIM-01 medium high high high high high high BRIM-02 low high high high high high high BRIM-03 medium high high high high high high BRIM-04 medium high high high high high high BRIM-05 high high high high medium medium medium BRIM-06 medium high high high high high high BRIM-07 medium high high high high high high BRIM-08 medium medium medium medium medium medium medium BRIM-09 medium high high high high high high BRIM-10 low low high high high high high BRIM-11 n.a. n.a. medium medium medium medium medium BRIM-12 n.a. high high high high high high BRIM-13 n.a. low low medium medium medium medium BRIM-14 n.a. low low low low medium medium BRIM-15 n.a. low low low low low low BRIM-16 n.a. n.a. high high high high high BRIM-17 n.a. n.a. high high high high high BRIM-18 n.a. n.a. high high high high high BRIM-19 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. low medium medium BRIM-20 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. low low low BRIM-21 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. low low medium BRIM-22 n.a. n.a. high high high high high BRIM-23 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. low low BRIM-24 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. low BRIM-25 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. low low

Urban Special low high high high medium medium medium Forces Units

Counter- Drug high high high high high high high Trafficking Brigade Special Operations high high high high high high high Command

The U.S. Aid Index assigns one of three values to aid per Army brigade or unit per year:

Low ‐ indicates minimal aid to the brigade, with two or fewer battalions receiving assistance during the year. All units benefitted indirectly from U.S. assistance. Medium ‐ indicates some or most of the sub‐units within the brigade were vetted and received assistance, with three or more battalions receiving assistance. High ‐ indicates, based on interviews and literature review, that the unit was a focus of US assistance during this period.

Aid scores for 2008 and 2009 are based only on whether aid to units was approved (via Leahy vetting), not whether the unit received assistance. For all other years, assistance to the units was confirmed. For 2000‐2003, State Department confirmed assistance was delivered for those years, but not when or for how long.

54 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE Appendix 6: Glossary of Military Terms and Hierarchy

The Colombian Army is made up of eight divisions. Divisions are made up of brigades, and brigades are made up of battalions. A “unit” is any organizational military structure, which can be a division, brigade, battalion, or smaller size.

Territorial brigades have jurisdictions or operating areas, and an administrative apparatus. Mobile brigades are typically made up of four counter‐guerrilla battalions. Mobile brigades, usually made up of about 1,500 soldiers, are considerably smaller than territorial brigades, which range in size from 3,000 to 5,000 personnel.

55 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

Endnotes

1 Based on data from the Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalía) and the Human Rights Observatory of the Colombia‐Europe‐ U.S. Coordination (herewith CCEEU). 2 Phil Alston, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Mission to Colombia (8–18 June 2009), 31 March 2010, A/HRC/14/24/Add.2. 3 See securityassistancemonitor.org 4 Special Operations Command chief Admiral William McRaven testified in February 2014 that “Colombia… is probably one of our best success stories. … there were elements within the Colombian military that had some human rights vetting issues. We worked through that.” Representative Buck McKeon added that Colombians “are spending more time on human rights training now than we do. So I commend you. That’s been a fantastic success.” Hearing of House Armed Services Committee, 27 February 2014. 5 Referring to militaries trained by U.S. special forces in nations at war, Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheridan told lawmakers in 2013 that “our relationship with them dramatically and steadily always moved in the direction of improving their respect for human rights and respect for rule of law.” He offered no evidence, and no member of Congress demanded any. Testimony before House Armed Services Committee, April 2013, cited in Emily Cadei, “Foreign Militaries, Domestic Tension,” CQ Weekly, 16 December 2013, p. 2072. 6 See Appendix 3 for a literature review of relevant governmental and academic studies on the efficacy of security assistance. 7 U.S. Department of Defense, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, January 2012, p. 3. 8 International Security Advisory Board, Report on Security Capacity Building, p. 15 http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/202920.pdf; and securityassistancemonitor.org. 9 Emily Cadei, “Foreign Militaries, Domestic Tension,” CQ Weekly, 16 December 2013, p. 2072. 10 Kate Doyle, “A Wretched Record of Military Cooperation,” The New York Times, 7 April 2013. 11 El Universal, 8 October 2010, at: http://www.eluniversal.com/2010/10/08/int_ava_evo‐morales‐ propondr_08A4578571 12 Jennifer Moroney, et. al., How Successful Are U.S. Efforts to Build Capacity in Developing Countries? A Framework to Assess the Global Train and Equip “1206” Program, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, TR‐1121‐OSD, 2011, pp. 3‐4. 13 The Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act (FATA), introduced in 2013 would require evaluation of all foreign assistance, including military aid. One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Ted Poe (R‐TX), said in April 2013 that “Americans want to see [whether] the money that we're sending to NGOs, the governments, et cetera is working or not working.”13 14 IMET trainees represented just one out of every 15 trainees in FY2012. See www.securityassistance.org. 15 Government Accounting Office, Observations on the International Military Education and Training Program, June 1990. 16 Thomas Bruneau, et.al., IMET Assessment Project, 2006‐2007, Naval Postgraduate School, 2007, pp. 31‐32. 17 Government Accountability Office, International Military Education and Training: Agencies Should Emphasize Human Rights Training and Evaluations, GAO‐12‐123, 2011, summary page. 18 See literature review, Appendix 1. 19 See Jennifer D. P. Moroney, et al., Developing an Assessment Framework for U.S. Air Force Building Partnerships Programs, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MG‐868‐AF, 2010, p. 64. 20 These include: Jefferson P. Marquis et al., Assessing the Value of U.S. Army International Activities, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2006; Jennifer D. P. Moroney et al., How Successful Are U.S. Efforts to Build Capacity in Developing Countries? A Framework to Assess the Global Train and Equip “1206” Program, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, TR‐ 1121‐OSD, 2011; Jennifer D. P. Moroney et al., Building Partner Capacity to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MG‐783‐DTRA, 2009; Jennifer D. P. Moroney et al., Developing an Assessment Framework for U.S. Air Force Building Partnerships Programs, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MG‐868‐AF, 2010. 21 A review of these documents for the word “rights” illustrates this point. The most frequent use of the word refers to U.S. military access rights in foreign nations to military bases, over‐flights, etc. Jennifer D. P. Moroney, et al., Developing an Assessment Framework for U.S. Air Force Building Partnerships Programs, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MG‐868‐ AF, 2010, p. 64. 22 Christopher Paul, et al., What Works Best When Building Partner Capacity and Under What Circumstances? RAND National Defense Research Institute (Santa Monica, 2013), p. xvi. 23 Jennifer Moroney, et. al., How Successful Are U.S. Efforts to Build Capacity in Developing Countries? A Framework to Assess the Global Train and Equip “1206” Program, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, TR‐1121‐OSD, 2011, pp. 3‐4. 24 One of the authors of this report previously documented human rights outcomes for individual officers and units they commanded, for a small number of Colombian officers who had spent six months or longer at the U.S. Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, between 2000 and 2004. This tracking was accomplished with Google searches to identify unit assignments of graduates, information on the command structure of the Colombian armed forces, and human rights cases in which military officers were implicated. Detailed reports by human rights organizations were also key to identifying human rights outcomes of U.S. trainees. Such a process requires commitment, and a respectful collaboration with human rights organizations that are tracking violations over a period of years. 25 International Security Advisory Board, “Report on Security Capacity Building,” 7 January 2013, p. 1. 26 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the‐press‐office/2013/04/05/fact‐sheet‐us‐security‐sector‐assistance‐policy

56 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE

27 Douglas Porch and Christopher Muller, “’Imperial Grunts’ Revisited: The US Advisory Effort in Colombia,” in Donald Stoker (ed.), Military Advising and Assistance : from Mercenaries to Privatization, 1815‐2007, Routledge, 2008, pp, 168‐191. 28 Testimony by U.S. Southern Command commanders before House and Senate armed services committee, 2001‐2007. 29 See www.securityassistancemonitor.org 30 U.S. Department of States, lists of Colombian units supported by the United States, provided to Senator Patrick Leahy, 2008‐2009. 31 Fellowship of Reconciliation, analysis of State Department Foreign Military Training reports and list of units vetted to receive assistance, unpublished, December 2007. 32 Douglas Porch and Christopher Muller, “’Imperial Grunts’ Revisited: The US Advisory Effort in Colombia,” in Donald Stoker (ed.), Military Advising and Assistance : from Mercenaries to Privatization, 1815‐2007, Routledge, 2008, pp, 168‐191. 33 Interviews with Colombian and U.S. officials; Robert D. Ramsey III, From El Billar to Operations Fenix and Jaque: The Colombian Security Force Experience, 1998‐2008, Occasional Paper 34, Combat Studies Institute Press, 2009, pp. 102, 110 34 Interview, Bogotá, October 2013. 35 Jefatura Logística Conjunta, Comando General Fuerzas Militares, “FMS Nacionalización,” Powerpoint presentation, 2011. 36 U.S. Department of State, cable published by Wikileaks, 03BOGOTA11615, “Colombia: 2003 Annual Terrorism Report,” 12 December 2003. The U.S. trained 176 Army GAULA members in 2003‐2005, and continued to train GAULA units through 2007. U.S. Department of State, Antiterrorism Assistance Program, Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2005, p. 7; http://www.state.gov/m/ds/rls/c24995.htm 37 Ramsey, op. cit., p. 110. 38 Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 203. 39 Some may be in the military justice system, or subject to civil suit. 40 The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia has reported that the military justice system in Colombia is investigating 2,900 cases of homicides by members of the Army, many of which may be additional to the data we have compiled. OHCHR‐Colombia, “Accountability for Extrajudicial Executions Committed by the Army in Colombia,” presentation in Washington, DC, 21 October 2013. 41 securityassistancemonitor.org 42 Department of State, “2001 Patterns of Global Terrorism,” Appendix J, at http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2001/html/10273.htm 43 National Security Presidential Directive 18, cited in Veritas: Journal of Army Special Operations History v. 2 no. 4, 2006, p. 70; HR 4775, 2002 Supplemental Appropriations Act for Further Recovery from and Response to Terrorist Attacks on the United States, Section 305(a). 44 John Otis, Law of the Jungle: The Hunt for Colombian Guerrillas, American Hostages, and Buried Treasure (New York: Harper, 2010). 45 Interview, Bogotá, 19 June 2013. 46 www.securityassistancemonitor.org. Countries receiving more military assistance 2004‐2007 were Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, and Iraq. 47 See http://pelosi.house.gov/sites/pelosi.house.gov/files/pressarchives/releases/prdrugs1.htm 48 State Department cable, “GOC ‘wealth tax’ boosts defense budget,” 23 February 2007, 07BOGOTA8453, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2007/02/07BOGOTA1302.html 49 U.S. arms sales to Colombia increased from $112 million to $538 million during the period. Data from Section 655 reports, posted at https://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/asmp/factsandfigures/government_data_index.html. 50 Interview with Gen. Mario Montoya, 12 June 2013, Bogotá. 51 Porch and Muller, op. cit., p. 175. 52 State Department private communication, January 2011. 53 Interview with Colombian officer, 25 September 2013, Medellín. 54 Dana Priest, “Covert action in Colombia,” Washington Post, 21 December 2013. 55 Philip Alston, op. cit.; Federación Internacional de Derechos Humanos and CCCEU, Colombia: The war is measured in litres of blood, 2012; CCEEU, Ejecuciones extrajudiciales en Colombia 2002‐2010: Crímenes de lesa humanidad bajo el mandato de la política de defensa y seguridad democrática; Fellowship of Reconciliation and U.S. Office on Colombia, Military Aid and Human Rights (2010); Ernesto Cárdenas y Edgar Villa, “La política de seguridad democrática y las ejecuciones extrajudiciales,” Ensayos sobre Política Económica 31 (2013) pp. 64‐72. 56 Ramsey, op. cit., p. 131. 57 Alfredo Rangel, “¿Qué pasa en el Ejército?”, Revista Cambio, nº 677, June 19‐25, 2006, p. 27. 58 Tomas E. Monarrez, “Event Study: The Incidence of Extra Judicial Killings and the Political Environment in Colombia, 2000‐2010,” unpublished, 2014. 59 Interview with retired Colombian officer, 2 octubre 2013. 60 Monarrez notes that “It may not be straightforward to directly interpret a percent decrease that is larger than one hundred percent. However, this kind of large negative effects are to be expected when the outcome variable is falling from a level that is much higher than its overall average during the time of the event.” Ibid. 61 The units list for both brigades and battalions was constructed based on Army directories for 2007‐2010, in order to have complete lists of units and commanders active in those years. Units determined not to be combat units were excluded from this lists. Mobile brigades are approximately the same size in number of soldiers as an average battalion in

57 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

a territorial brigade. So randomness of number of executions attributed to mobile brigades and those attributed to battalions in fixed brigades were considered together to test for randomness for number of executions. 62 Battalions and mobile brigades were analyzed together because they have a similar number of soldiers, compared to territorial brigades, which are larger. Battalion/mobile brigade outliers for executions in 2007 were, in descending order: 15th Mobile Brigade, Magdalena Battalion, Pigoanza Battalion, Joint Task Force Sucre, GAULA Casanare, and 4th Mobile Brigade. The only brigade outlier in 2007 was the 9th Brigade. The Magdalena and Pigoanza Battalions, 4th Mobile Brigade, and 9th Brigade each received direct U.S. assistance in 2005 and 2006. 63 Mobile brigades have close to the same number of soldiers as an infantry battalion, and so are grouped together for comparison. 64 A brigade was identified for 1,810 of them; a battalion (a sub‐unit of a brigade) was identified for 1,353 of them.) Of these 1,821 killings, the commander of the brigade responsible for the killing at the time it occurred was identified for 1,629, and the commander of the battalion responsible was identified for 686 executions. 65 Fellowship of Reconciliation and U.S. Office on Colombia, Military Aid and Human Rights, 2010, at forusa.org/colombia‐ report‐2010. 66 Numbers of killings shown on maps, however, use the total number of executions for which the victim’s name is known. 67 Examples of brigades receiving medium levels of aid include the 11th Brigade in Córdoba State in 2006‐07 (55 executions attributed to the brigade in those two years) and the 9th Brigade in Huila in 2005‐2009 (135 executions attributed to the brigade in those four years). 68 Brigades receiving high levels of aid include the Army’s Special Operations Command (no executions reported), Counter‐Drug Brigade (one execution reported), and ten mobile brigades in Task Force Omega (varied numbers of executions reported, ranging from one for the 9th Mobile Brigade to 28 for the 4th Mobile Brigade). 69 Sixty‐nine of the 95 executions were committed by mobile brigades receiving high levels of U.S. assistance. 70 U.S. Embassy cable published by Wikileaks, 07BOGOTA696, “Colmil Relieves Colonel Of Command For Paramilitary Ties; Prosecutor General Opens Investigation,” 31 January 2007. 71 Interview with Colonel Hernán Mejía Gutiérrez, 9 March 2013, Bogotá. 72 Juzgado Sexto Penal del Circuito Especializado de Bogotá, sentence of Hernán Publio Mejía Gutiérrez, 6 September 2013, p. 93. 73 Interview with Colonel Carlos Alfonso Velásquez, 14 June 2013, Bogotá. 74 Human Rights Watch, War Without Quarter: Colombia and International Humanitarian Law, 1998, pp. 56‐58. 75 Thomas Bruneau, et.al., op. cit., p. 26. 76 Interview, Bogotá, September 2013. 77 Ibid., p. 7. 78 Interview, Washington DC, June 2013. 79 Winifred Tate, 2011; Fellowship of Reconciliation and U.S. Office on Colombia, Military Aid and Human Rights: Colombia, U.S. Responsibility, and Global Implications, 2010, available at http://forusa.org/colombia‐report‐2010. 80 More than 80,000 Colombians received U.S. military training from other institutions or in Colombia during the same period. Just the Facts, www.justf.org; WHINSEC faculty and student data for 2011‐2012 were provided by WHINSEC staff. 81 Col. Glenn Huber, interview, June 2012. 82 Fifteen were from Venezuela, the nation with the next largest number of instructors. 83 For a detailed accounting, see http://forusa.org/sites/default/files/uploads/colombiawhinsecgrads.pdf 84 Of these four, three had attended the School of the Americas previously. 85 WHINSEC slide presentation, June 2012. 86 Securityassistancemonitor.org 87 Interview with Russell Ramsey, 4 February 2014, via telephone. 88 Interview with U.S. official, 1 June 2013, Washington, DC. 89 Ramsey, op. cit., p. 131. 90 “False positives” refer to a specific type of extrajudicial killing employed by state forces in Colombia. We define it as intentional murders of Colombian civilians falsely presented as combat deaths with the goal of showing successful results under the “democratic security” policy, a policy designed to combat guerilla organizations and terrorism” (CCEEU, 2013). 91 By the time the false positives scandal emerged as the primary human rights issue in Colombia, Colombian NGOs had about three decades of experience organizing against state‐perpetrated violence. This enabled these organizations to build large coalitions, with the effect being a latticework of organizations that have representation in most of the Colombian state. It also enabled them to go through a rigorous professionalization process (see Tate, 2007: Ch 3) that focused on accurately documenting human rights abuses and transparently disseminating this information. 92 Coordinación Colombia‐Europa‐Estados Unidos, Falsos Positivos: Ejecuciones extrajudiciales directamente atribuibles a la Fuerza Pública en Colombia, julio de 2002 a junio de 2006, audiencia ante la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, 23 October 2006. 93 Coordinación Colombia‐Europa‐Estados Unidos, Ejecuciones extrajudiciales: el caso del oriente antioqueño, March 2007. 94 Observatorio de derechos humanos y derecho humanitario de la Coordinación Colombia–Europa–Estados Unidos, Boletines trimestrales sobre ejecuciones extrajudiciales entre 2008–2010. 95 Informe Preliminar de la misión internacional de observación sobre ejecuciones extrajudiciales e impunidad en Colombia. Bogotá, 2007 96 Observatorio de derechos humanos y derecho humanitario de la Coordinacio ́n Colombia–Europa–Estados Unidos:

58 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE

Ejecuciones extrajudiciales directamente atribuibles a la Fuerza Pública en Colombia, julio de 2006 a junio de 2007. 97 See footage from the movie “Falsos Positivos”(2009). The demonstration was dispersed by government forces with tear gas. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srxt7bGBsr4 98 US Embassy cable: http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08BOGOTA3959_a.html 99 Simon Romero, “Colombian Army Commander Resigns in Scandal Over Killing of Civilians,” The New York Times, 4 November 2008. 100 A detailed chronicle of the sentencing of the soldiers is available (in Spanish) at: http://periodismohumano.com/en‐ conflicto/cronica‐de‐una‐sentencia‐historica‐los‐falsos‐positivos‐de‐soacha‐son‐crimenes‐de‐lesa‐humanidad.html. 101 The dismissal of the officers “is a triumph for human rights organizations and for Colombian society as a whole,” said Reynaldo Villalba of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective. http://www.ipsnews.net/2008/10/rights‐colombia‐ extrajudicial‐killings‐under‐scrutiny/. Accessed 3/23/2014 102 See "Body count mentalities"Colombia’s "False Positives" Scandal, Declassified, by Michael Evans http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB266/ 103 “Los jóvenes desaparecidos de Soacha fueron dados de baja en combate, no fueron a recoger café, iban con propósitos delincuenciales”: “Uribe se aclara que no se sabe si jovenes murieron en combate,” Semana, 7 October 2008. 104 “Ambassador Discusses Wealth Tax, Human Rights with Defense Minister Santos,” 21 December 2006, cable published by Wikileaks. 105 Salazar conducted 22 anonymous interviews with high‐level government, army, UN and other officials who had been personally involved in managing the false positives scandal. Phillip Alston, the former Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, in his preface to the Salazar article, explains this problem adeptly: “Evaluation [of human rights practices] is ideally undertaken by objective and impartial external experts. But all too often the outsiders have neither the requisite expertise nor the access to enable them to do other than a superficial assessment. The insiders, for their part, generally do not have the incentive or the necessary degree of detachment to enable them to undertake a compelling evaluation of the work with which they have been engaged” (Salazar, 2012: 396). Salazar, who compiled much of the evidence cited in this section, believes that public international pressure to stop extrajudicial killings was important, but that long‐term relationships between OHCHR and Colombian government officials were more important. 106 securityassistancemonitor.org. 107 U.S. Department of State, 2004 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 27 February 2005, at http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41754.htm; 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 8 March 2006, at http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61721.htm; 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 6 March 2007, at http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78885.htm 108 “Muertos en Acevedo no eran delincuentes,” La Nación, 11 de enero de 2007; Observatorio Surcolombiano de Derechos Humanos, Voces y Silencios Enero‐June 2007 No. 1, 2007. 109 This section was drafted by Janice Gallagher, PhD Candidate, Cornell University, and draws directly from Janice Gallagher (2014) Tipping the Scales of Justice: The Role of Organized Citizen Action in Strengthening the Rule of Law, forthcoming, Cornell University. 110 According to the "Memorandum of Justification Concerning Human Rights Conditions with Respect to Assistance for the Colombian Armed Forces," 28 July, 2008, US Department of State, p. 24: "The Human Rights Unit received an increased of 72 prosecutors raising its number from 45 in 2007 to 117. The Unit will also increase its number of investigators by 110. The additional 72 prosecutors have been selected. Twenty have been assigned and are being trained, with the support of the U.S. government, in the investigation and prosecution of cases of extrajudicial killings… Increased training for the new, as well as existing, prosecutors and investigators, is taking place with assistance from the U.S. government…" 111 This finding is separate from the debate over whether the more severe punishment, for example, the imposition of the death penalty, deters crime. Much evidence indicates that more severe punishment does not have deterrent effects. See Daniel Nagin ed., 1998, Criminal Deterrence Research at the Outset of the Twenty‐First Century. University of Chicago Press, and Ross Matsueda, David Huizinga, and Derek Kreager, “Deterring Delinquents: A rational choice model of theft and violence,” American Sociological Review 71, (2006), pp. 25‐122. While this research from criminologists is useful, it is limited by two aspects of the research design: nearly all empirical studies on the deterrent effect of incarceration have been conducted in the United States, with either small samples of convicted felons, or as thought experiments with college‐aged students. These population samples do not help us understand, particularly, how government employees in Colombia make decisions about when and whether to violate the law. Colombia, by any measure, punishes far fewer people, and especially government employees, for committing crimes than the US. Since expectations regarding the possibility of being punished are much lower in Colombia than the US, these findings are difficult to apply. 112 Sikkink’s universe of cases includes 66 countries that have had democratic transitions; 16 countries that have transitioned from civil war; and 28 countries that have experienced the transition of state creation. The subset of these countries that have had both human rights prosecutions and truth commissions includes 48 countries, while those countries that have only had truth commissions include 28 countries. She uses US State Department Annual Country Reports from 1970 – 2009 to code for whether there was at least one trial in a given year which sought to hold a government agent individual criminally accountable for a human rights violations. She defines “repression” as a as violations of physical integrity rights – torture, summary executions, disappearances and political imprisonment, and uses both the Cingranelli and Richards scale and Political Terror Scale for this data source.

59 THE RISE AND FALL OF “FALSE POSITIVE” KILLINGS IN COLOMBIA

113 The cases of state agents dismembering civilians in the Trujillo massacre, and of members of the army who participated in killing farmers and children with machetes in San José de Apartadó, are two egregious examples of high profile cases remaining in impunity. 114 While there were more than 2,000 executions registered with the NHRU in 2009, the NHRU provided information on the judicial status of only 1,300 of them. These are the executions considered in the universe of cases. 115 Ramsey op. cit., p. 153. 116 Ibid., 100‐101. 117 Ramsey, p. 110; State Department, lists of Colombian units supported by the United States, provided to Senator Patrick Leahy, 2008‐2009. In 2000, the 5th Mobile Brigade operated in Santander Department. 118 Department of State, Foreign Military Training Report, Fiscal Year 2003‐2004, p. IV‐259; David Adams, “Reclaiming Rural Colombia,” Saint Petersburg Times, 6 April, 2003. 119 Department of State, Foreign Military Training Report, Fiscal Year 2004, p. IV‐258; Department of State, Foreign Military Training Report, Fiscal Year 2005, p. IV‐207. 120 “Acto de contrición,” Semana, 25 octubre 2008, http://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/acto‐contricion/96651‐3 121Ambassador William Brownfield, cable published by Wikileaks 08BOGOTA3084, “August Human Rights Update: Extrajudicial Killings A Concern, Progress In Cases,” 3 September 2008; “Por muerte de sindicalistas en Arauca, destituido 20 años un coronel del Ejército,” Semana, 2 September 2008. 122 Ariel Fernando Arias and Patricia Moreno, Monografía Política Electoral: Departamento de Arauca, 1997‐2007, in Refundando la Nación, edited by Claudia López Hernández, 2010, p. 18. 123 Office in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights situation in Colombia,” E/CN.4/2002/17, 28 February 2002. 124 Humanidad Vigente, La estrategia legal del paramilitarismo, 2009, pp. 33‐35. 125 U.S. Department of State, Foreign Military Training Report FY2003, vol. IV, p. 259 126 Robert D. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (New York: Vintage, 2006), p. 64. 127 Porch and Muller, op.cit., p. 175. 128 Both human rights organizations and the Villavicencio Section of the Fiscalía have also documented unnamed persons reported killed by armed forces during this period, but because they are not named, they can’t be distinguished from cases investigated by the National Human Rights Unit. 129 Carolina Hoyos, “Proceso Investigativo: Cementerios de NN’s en los Llanos Orientales,” 4 May 2013. The number of persons whose remains were buried as John Does were: San José del Guaviare, 571; Granada, Meta: 528; La Macarena, Meta: 464; Villavicencio, Meta: 610; Vista Hermosa, Meta: 155. A national census of municipal cemeteries found the remains of more than 20,000 unidentified persons, with fewer tan half of the municipalities responding. 130 22 USC Sect. 2347g requires the Defense Department to maintain a database on each foreign military or civilian defense ministry participant in IMET programs since 2000, including “the type of instruction received, the dates of such instruction, whether such instruction was completed successfully, and, to the extent practicable, a record of the person’s subsequent military or defense ministry career and current position and location.” 131 “End Use Monitoring Report 2005,” p. 14, at http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/rpt/eum/2005/index.htm

60 THE ROLE OF U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE