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Article: Unearthing Secrets of Colombia's Long War; Forensic Teams Track Victims 'Disappeared' by Death Squads
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- August 27, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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A team of forensic anthropologists painstakingly dug up the
bodies -- two from the town's decaying mausoleum, others from the
moist earth in the cemetery, a couple from a field nearby. The
preferred method of death: a single gunshot to the head. One young
man had been beheaded, his skull now nowhere to be found.
Victims of Colombia's slow-burning but brutal civil war, they had
been killed by right-wing death squads and left on roadsides and in
ditches around this northern town. Their impoverished relatives, too
fearful to report the slayings, hastily buried the bodies and never
told authorities.
The scene had been repeated across Colombia for a generation, as
illegal paramilitary gunmen, ...