Delivered in Colombia skeletal remains of 28 people

19.08.2011 14:12

 

The skeletal remains of 28 people were killed by guerrillas and paramilitaries, including a Catholic priest, were presented by the prosecution to their families in a ceremony held in the northwest.The ceremony was led by the attorney general, Viviane Morales in the city of Medellin, capital of Antioquia department, 250 kilometers northwest of Bogota. 

Morales gave the remains to the families, including the priest Dario Peña García was murdered in March 2004 by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in rural area of ​​Valdivia, Antioquia, 330 kilometers northwest of the 
Colombian capital, prosecutors said in a statement. 

The 28 exhumations of the bodies of 27 men and one woman were made in Antioquia and 
four other departments of the country as Cundinamarca, Caldas, Valle del Cauca and Meta. All the victims were missing and murdered by paramilitaries and guerrillas from 1991 to 2008, said the prosecutor. 

Maria Lucila Garcia, mother of the murdered priest, said that "today is a very sad" for her and her family. He ignored the reasons why his son was missing and later killed by the FARC. 

The priest, 43, was reported missing in 2004 and was not heard from him again until May 23 when his body was found in a mass grave, also in Valdivia, Garcia said in a telephone interview with AP. 

He said that "heart" and forgive the murderers of his son. "I ask God to forgive them, but give them repentance," he said. 

The Diocese of Santa Rosa de Osos, Antioquia, in which Pena was ordained in 1988, reported on its website that the funeral will be held on August 31 in the town he came from the priest, San Pedro de los Milagros also in Antioquia, a town 260 km northwest of Bogota. 

Since August 2007 the unit was created when the exhumation of the Attorney General until 30 June, according to recent data, have been returned to their families the skeletal remains of 1,478 victims of violence. The prosecution, which places these bodies for evidence of demobilized not identify how many of these people were victims of paramilitary and how many of the guerrillas. 

Others are 891 bones in the hands of the prosecution and are subject to scientific tests to establish its full identification, according to the investigating agency. 

The prosecution estimates that in Colombia at least 41,000 people disappeared during the armed conflict, while the paramilitaries are attributed to 156,000 murders from 1980 to 2004. These victims may be some of the missing.