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Secret Documents Show US Aware of Colombian Army Killings in 1990s - by Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA - Declassified U.S. documents show that the CIA and former U.S. ambassadors were fully aware, as far back as 1990, that the military in Colombia – the third largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt – were committing extrajudicial killings as part of "death-squad tactics."

They also knew that senior Colombian officers encouraged a "body count" mentality to demonstrate progress in the fight against left-wing guerrillas. In an undetermined number of cases, the bodies presented as casualties in the counterinsurgency war were actually civilians who had nothing to do with the country's decades-old armed conflict.

Since at least 1990, U.S. diplomats were reporting a connection between the Colombian security forces and far-right drug-running paramilitary groups, according to the Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA).

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