Reckoning with the Past in Colombia
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You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. For decades, Colombians suffered through a violent guerrilla war that killed hundreds of thousands. The country's Truth Commission found that approximately 80% of those deaths were civilians.

Now, some former army soldiers that are accused of taking part in atrocities are trying to make amends. They're helping to locate and dig up the remains of innocent civilians executed by the Colombian military. John Otis takes us to a Colombian city where they're searching for some of these victims.

In this cemetery in the Colombian city of Neiva, workers are excavating a grave thought to hold the remains of six people. The diggers include forensic experts as well as three former soldiers. Hello.

One of them is Mario, a former lieutenant colonel who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals. Mario was deputy commander of a nearby army base in the early 2000s when the guerrilla war was raging.

Back then, Mario tells me, he and other officers came under fierce pressure from the top brass to run up the body count. Failure could derail their careers, while reporting more rebels killed in combat could mean promotions. But the policy led to massive abuses, as soldiers rounded up farmers, day laborers, and unemployed teenagers, killed them, and reported them as combat deaths.

Mario says that troops under his command were responsible for 63 such homicides. It got totally out of control, Mario admits. These were atrocities that never should have happened. Government investigators determined that during the war, soldiers executed more than 6,400 civilians and presented them as combat kills.

Juanita Gobertus heads the America's Division of Human Rights Watch. It was certainly one of the most, if not the most atrocious crime committed during the armed conflict in Colombia. Now, however, Mario and other former soldiers are trying to atone for their crimes in exchange for leniency from a special court.

Colombia's War Crimes Tribunal, which is also investigating atrocities by the guerrillas, was set up under a 2016 peace treaty that ended much of the fighting. Tribunal President Alejandro Ramel tells NPR that ex-soldiers can avoid prison by telling the truth about the illegal executions, apologizing to relatives of the dead, and providing information on where they might be buried.

He says the former soldiers are also getting a stark look at the damage they've done by taking part in the exhumations. I think the message is very important because it's the first time in Colombia that the criminals are looking for the victims in the cemeteries.

Finding and identifying the dead is extremely difficult. Many were simply dumped in hastily dug mass graves, says Diego Sevilla, who heads the government forensic team in Neiva. An example of the chaos is the gravesite that was thought to hold the remains of six people.

However, Sevilla's team has found 12 skulls, meaning that at least 12 people are buried there. All along, relatives of the victims have been closely monitoring the exhumations. Among them is Yolanda Rocha. He was...

She says her 15-year-old brother was executed by troops, then dressed up as a gorilla, and that he might be buried here in the cemetery. She's talked to some of the soldiers who expressed deep regret for killing so many innocents, like her brother. It was very difficult, Rocha says. You want the truth, but it's like opening up an old wound.

Similar exhumations, with help from ex-soldiers, will soon start in other Colombian cemeteries. But after 10 days in Neiva, the forensic team here is wrapping up its work.

Now they're bagging up remains and preparing them for storage so they can eventually be delivered to relatives of the deceased. Then the team holds a ceremony to honor the dead. Some team members recite poetry. Others solemnly place flowers atop the bags of remains. Finally, Mario, the former army officer whose men killed 63 civilians, steps forward.

Let's hope this never happens again, he says, because the pain this has caused is immense. For NPR News, I'm John Otis in Neiva, Colombia. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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