Relatives of disappeared brace themselves as bodies are exhumed from notorious mass grave in Colombia

Medellín’s Comuna 13 neighbourhood saw extraordinary violence in the 2000s, with hundreds of people detained, tortured or killed

When Operation Orión began in October 2002, Hermey Mejía thought the violence that had ravaged his corner of Medellín for decades would finally come to an end.

The 22-year-old told his mother, Teresa Gómez, that he hoped Colombia’s armed forces would get rid of the urban guerrillas who ruled the streets of Comuna 13, then one of the most dangerous districts in the world. The area, of strategic importance for drugs and weapons trafficking, had long been trapped in a cycle of bloodshed: first under Pablo Escobar’s narcos, then, after their fall, leftwing militias.

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