Colombian authorities have firmly denied recent claims of the United Nations committee that the bodies of 20,000 people who were forcibly disappeared over the years of conflict are stored at Bogota’s El Dorado International Airport.
Carlos Fernando Galán, the mayor of Bogota, rejected the UN’s claims. He demanded concrete evidence to substantiate such serious accusations.
Galán also questioned the credibility of the sources and asked for a detailed explanation of how the UN committee reached these conclusions.
“We have already conducted searches, and no evidence supports these assertions,” he stated.
The Ministry of Defense in Colombia also dismissed the report’s findings, labeling them as unsubstantiated and unfounded.
They emphasized that all hangars at El Dorado Airport are routinely inspected and that no indication of concealed bodies has ever been uncovered.
Officials argued that the UN committee’s statement could potentially damage Colombia’s reputation internationally and has prompted a call for the UN to retract their accusation.
The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances asserted that thousands of unidentified bodies lay in poorly managed cemeteries or storage facilities across the country.
The claims were specifically focused on 27 hangars at the Bogota airport, which the UN alleged were being used to store the corpses of those who vanished during Colombia’s lengthy internal conflict.
This conflict involved the Colombian government, various paramilitary groups, and leftist guerrillas, with thousands of civilians reportedly disappearing during the turmoil.