Extrajudicial Executions of Youth
Young Colombians in Arauca department are repeatedly targeted for arbitrary detention, torture, assassination and attempted assassination.
Over Easter week there was a new turn to extra-judicial assassinations. In one incident amongst many to detailed by the Regional Human Rights Commitee, on 27th March four young men were out hunting chigiros as is the local custom, when they were run into the "Heroes de Saraguro" battalion of the national army, who shot and threw grenades at them killing 17 year old �HUGO HORACIO HURTADO CASTRO The other three were arrested and taken to the military post inside the Caño Limon oil complex, where they were maltreated and accused of being guerrillas. That same day paramilitaries set up a roadblock in Tame and assassinated taxi driver ALCIDES PARALES DURAN.
Cucuta Pool Hall
On 4th April a paramilitary death squad working with military intelligence agents attached to the Colombian army’s 5th Brigade entered a pool hall in the ‘Cecilia Castro’ neighbourhood of the city of Cucuta in Norte de Santander department. The paramilitaries opened fire killing four men and a woman and injuring several more people.The neighbourhood, which is made up predominantly of poor displaced families, has recently been on the receiving end of regular accusations that its inhabitants are guerrilla sympathisers and the security forces have long harassed and intimidated local residents. Paramilitary units have murdered nearly 100 people in Cucuta so far this year.
Indigenous Leader Assassinated
Mar’a Fabiola Largo Cano, the leader of the Embera Chami people, was assassinated by hitmen on 9th Abril 2002, at 1:20pm in Sipirra community within the Cañamomo-Lomaprieta reserve in Riosucio. The assassination was carried out by two killers on a high powered motorcycle, near the Rural School at Sipirra where she had been attending a meeting with other indigenous leaders.
