Colombia’s war crimes tribunal finds human remains on Bogota army base

A forensics team of Colombia’s war crimes tribunal JEP has found human remains at the former headquarters of military intelligence in the capital Bogota, W Radio reported.

The remains were found on the grounds of the National Army’s Logistics School on Bogota’s eastern border.

The JEP ordered excavations at the logistics school in 2024 after a former intelligence official, Jose Leonairo Dorado, confirmed that two now-defunct military intelligence agencies were buried at the army compound.

Dorado worked for the Intelligence and Counterintelligence Battalion and the 20th Brigade between 1986 and 1997.

Both intelligence agencies operated from the logistics school and were dismantled because of allegations of their involvement in the extermination of leftist activists and politicians in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

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In response to Dorado’s testimony, the war crimes tribunal ordered excavations at the logistics school.

According to W Radio, the Medical Examiner’s Office tested the bones found at the school and informed the JEP that the exhumed skeletal remains belonged to a man between 20 and 28 years old.

The Medical Examiner’s Office found no DNA material that could help identify the victim, reported the radio station.

The investigations into crimes committed by the military are part of a transitional justice process that also investigates crimes committed by the now-defunct guerrilla organization FARC.