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Beatriz Méndez last saw her son and nephew alive in 2004

Beatriz Méndez sifts through heaps of yellowed newspaper clippings in her small home in the Colombian capital, Bogotá.
She collected them over the last 14 years as testament to her fight for justice after her son, Weimar, and her nephew, Edward, were killed.
Ms Méndez last saw them alive on 12 June 2004. The next time she saw them, they were in a morgue.
They were almost unrecognisable, bruised and battered from alleged torture. Both were just 19 years old.
For three days after their disappearance, Ms Méndez and her family searched local police stations and hospitals to no avail. Then came a call from a family member.
"On the radio they're saying they found the bodies of two guerrilla fighters in Ciudad Bolívar [a poor neighbourhood of Bogotá], they say that one is called Edward," Ms Méndez recalls.
When she and her sister went to the morgue their worst nightmare came true.
But it did not end there. After bringing home her son's body, it was a shock to Ms Méndez to find blood-stained army fatigues and boots inside the bag of clothes the morgue had sent her home with.
For four years, Ms Méndez was in the dark about how her son and nephew had been killed. Then she heard a group of women talking on a radio programme about cases similar to those of Weimar and Edward. She got in touch with them and joined their collective, the Mothers of False Positives (Mafapo).
False positives is the name given to the killings of young men - mainly from poor families in Bogotá and its surroundings - carried out by the Colombian army. The army's aim was to pass them off as left-wing Farc rebels to boost its kill rate and give the impression it was winning the armed conflict against the group.




The false positives scandal caused outrage in Colombia when it first broke in 2008
The false positives scandal caused outrage in Colombia when it first broke in 2008

The victims were lured to rural parts of Colombia with promises of job opportunities, and their bodies were later found dead in mass graves.
Some had been dressed in guerrilla fatigues like those used by the Farc, others had had weapons placed in their hands.

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