The Attorney’s Office Colombia reported on Thursday that it will verify the existence of 20,000 bodies unidentified in a hangar from the Bogotá airport, after the United Nations Committee against Forced Disappearances warned of their possible presence.
The information of an assumption hangar with bodies unidentified persons was communicated to the independent experts of the UN that culminated on Thursday a visit in Colombia to verify the country’s work in the search for its thousands of missing people.
“It is a information that we have also received from the National Institute of Medicine Legal and Forensic Sciences. We have not visited them,” said Carmen Rosa Villa, member of the committee of the UNduring a press conference in Bogotá in which they reported preliminary findings.
Villa explained that the bodies unidentified would be kept in a hangar because there would be no place to preserve them. “And hence our very specific recommendation: it is necessary that they have infrastructure, human resources and financial resources to be able to establish a reservation,” he explained.
Hours later, the National Institute of Medicine Legal Colombian denied the existence of a hangar with bodies unidentified. “The entity is unaware of the existence of said hangar and has not received requests from any authority for the study and analysis of said cases,” he said in a statement.
However, the Attorney’s Office —in charge of monitoring and disciplinary sanctioning of public servants— ordered the institute forensic expert give explanations to confirm or refute said information.
He attorney delegate for the rights human rights, Javier Sarmiento, said in a video released to the press that given the “gravity and magnitude of the information received by the committee” of the UN They will travel to the El Dorado airport to search for the alleged hangar with bodies.
Opainthe concessionaire of the Bogotá international airport, assured in a statement that it has “no knowledge of these events” and indicated that they will be the authorities who will be in charge of clarifying them.
Disappearance forced
- More than 121,768 people have been victims of disappearance forced in Colombia between 1985 and 2016, as documented by the Truth Commission, an extrajudicial body that had the mission of clarifying the long Colombian conflict after the 2016 peace agreement with the extinct guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
- The committee of the UN warned that forced disappearances “They are not a crime of the past“, but it continues to happen in Colombiain contexts of forced recruitment, human trafficking and forced displacement. Therefore, he urged the State to create a comprehensive public policy to prevent forced disappearances.
The Committee against UN Forced Disappearance will present a final report of his visit to Colombia before the plenary session of that body in March 2025.
