“When he fired, even blood splattered on my uniform,” says a statement delivered by a police patrolman in the department of Sucre, blaming his commander, Colonel Benjamín Núñez, for cold-bloodedly murdering three young men in that area of the country. SEMANA learned about the file on this tragedy.
The audios, which are in that file, recreate the distressing moment in which the Police capture the young people, who later arrived lifeless at a Sincelejo hospital. It seems to be about radio communications in which a woman screams desperately for someone to throw herself on the floor, then a man’s voice is heard with a terrifying order: kill them.
- Woman: Quiet, quiet there… on the floor.
- Man: Kill him, those bastards, kill them.
The woman, anguished, gives the order to throw herself on the ground, then it gives indications of where it is. The other person speaking is a manwho reassures her while warning her that he is going to support her.
- Woman: Central, central, in the entire Y of Chochó, the entire Y. The two intersections on the road.
- Man: It’s here, it’s here, woman.
The evidence, which includes police reports, audios, inspections, statements, minutes, reports and, above all, contradictions, led the investigators to concludewith very little room for doubt, that 10 minutes from the city of Sincelejo, by a trail and with the weapons of the State, a false positive was perpetrated.
The chronicle of this death sentence, which fell on the humanity of Carlos Alberto Ibáñez, Jesús David Díaz Monterroza and José Carlos Arévalo, the three victims, began with another bloody act: the murder, at the hands of the Clan del Golfo, of the young patrolman Diego Ruiz, who had been in the institution for barely a month. “He had not even received his first salary,” his colleagues said.
Once the crime of the uniformed man was known, the order in the reports of the Police Radio Station was to capture those responsible. A padlock plan and location were arranged of the criminals, who, it was said, were wounded. All the police in the area started the search.but it was the Childhood and Adolescence that intercepted three young suspects.
It was at a place known as La Garita, a point of intersection that connects, at each end, the district of Chochó, the municipalities of Sampués, Sincelejo and Corozal. Immediately, the site was flooded with soldiers from all specialties: Goes, Gaula, surveillance, Sijín.
There was also the commander, Colonel Núñez, who assumed control of the case. It was the last time the three young men were seen alive.
The doubts
The hypothesis of what happened in Sucre, told by the uniformed men who were on the site and who participated in the capture of the young people, fell apart in the first week of the investigation. The reports written by the police, explaining the facts, became a hoax that the Military Criminal Justice he discovered just by listening to the uniformed men themselves in a statement.
The Uber patrolman Guillermo Mieles, from the Children and Adolescents group, left in his letter, delivered two days after the events, that after intercepting two motorcycles in the La Garita sector, he realized that the three young people were “seriously injured.” That is why he asked for support for his transfer. However, in subsequent statements, the story told by his fellow patrol members is very different.
The three youths were not seriously injured, only one was shot in the one leg, the others were intact.
This was confirmed in the declaration proceedings that SEMANA learned about and that are part of the file held by the Prosecutor’s Office. The conclusion not only warns that the first report is riddled with lies, but that the young people were alive before being transferred by the Police.
The same thing happened with the reports made by Second Lieutenant María Camila Buriticá from CAI Ford, and a deputy commissioner in charge from the police station in the municipality of Sampués, where the patrolman was killed.
The consigned data was denied by those who rendered the declaration proceedings. There are doubts about an alleged crossfire once the patrolman Ruiz was murdered and that supposedly left the murderers wounded.
The version of the patrol car driver of the Police van, in which the three young people still alive were mounted, warns that he received the order to alter the route, which was supposed to be the fastest to get to Sincelejo and to the hospital. The order came, according to the uniformed man, Colonel Benjamín Núñez, after warning of a blockade on the road. The investigation revealed that this was also false.
A fact that caught the attention in the course of the investigation is in the reports and monitoring of the Police vehicles that participated in the procedure. All cars are supposed to have a GPS system, but, curiously, the vans of Colonel Núñez and Second Lieutenant Buriticá did not have it, so the tracking could not be done in these two cases.
Those involved
Eight soldiers were removed from their posts, including Colonel Benjamín Núñez, who bears the responsibility and whom two patrolmen identified as the author of a brutal murder. The statements of these policemen are clear in pointing out that the colonel fired and, with a commanding voice, warned that he would respond.
Currently, the colonel left the country from Cartagena and bound for Panama, but is in Mexico. His family assured that he does not intend to flee from justice, he only expects security guarantees to face the process while he must avoid risky situations, which left consigned in a document in which he assures that criminals in Sucre offer up to 50 million pesos for his head.
For the Military Criminal Justice there is no doubt that the facts reveal a serious case of homicide, in circumstances that are far from the role of the Police. That is why they sent the 1,000-page file to the Prosecutor’s Office, which has so far warned that it is working on the recovery of evidence in order to make decisions.
The victims assured that they are concerned about the passivity of the authorities with this case. There are no decisions from the Prosecutor’s Office and they do not receive a response from the Police. The lawyer Didier Pizza Gerena, representative of two families in this case, assured that Colonel Núñez’s “escape” was a consequence of the authorities’ lack of action.
“It is necessary to investigate, not only the responsibility of the colonel, but also of the uniformed men who were with him in the truck. They have a degree of co-authorship, they saw what happened. If they did not participate, they did not avoid it either and only until they were summoned did they decide to tell what happened “said the lawyer and representative of victims.
For Pizza Gerena, the doubts that arose in the investigation and in the documents obtained by SEMANA explain how they tried to mislead the authorities with false reports and adulterated reports that, in principle, made it difficult to know the truth, which is now being made public. : Carlos, Jesús and José were sentenced to death, they would be false positives.