Bogota, Colombia. Colombia’s Search Unit for Disappeared People said it has identified the remains of Catholic priest Camilo Torres, who joined the National Liberation Army (ELN) and was killed in combat in 1966.
Identification of Camilo Torres’ remains
The Search Unit for Disappeared People (UBPD), a state entity tasked with finding and identifying more than 135,000 people who disappeared during Colombia’s six decades of civil conflict, said on Monday it had identified Torres’ remains.
Torres, the son of a well-connected Bogota family, was an adherent of liberation theology, a Catholic anti-imperialist social justice movement. He joined the ELN about four months before his death and was killed in February 1966 in eastern Santander province in a skirmish with the army.
UBPD Director Luz Janeth Forero told journalists the unit used public and classified records, including from the military justice system, to locate where Torres’ remains had been interred by the military after his death.
DNA samples from bones found in 2024 in the military section of a cemetery in Bucaramanga were compared with a sample taken from the remains of Torres’ father, Calisto, which were exhumed from a cemetery in Bogota for testing.
“After 60 years of disappearance, the search unit found, identified and completed a dignified handover of Father Camilo Torres,” Forero said.
UBPD mandate and conflict context
The UBPD was created by a 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group to lead archival and forensic efforts to find disappeared people. Those cases include people forcibly disappeared by right-wing paramilitaries, rebel groups and state security forces, as well as those forced to join armed groups, soldiers missing in action and others.
The ELN, founded in 1964, remains active and is itself accused of forced disappearances. It has held sporadic peace talks with various governments and said in December it was willing to resume negotiations.
Handover and burial plans
Forero said Torres’ remains were handed over on Sunday to Javier Giraldo, a Catholic priest known for activism on behalf of conflict victims, on the 60th anniversary of Torres’ death.
Giraldo said Torres will be buried at Bogota’s National University, where he studied and worked as a chaplain, and he recognized the efforts of Torres’ mother, Isabel Restrepo, to find her son while she was alive.
Search unit findings to date
Forero said the unit, which began work in 2017, has found nearly 5,000 remains, identifying and handing over about 700 to loved ones. She added that it has also found 500 living people who were reported as disappeared.
What do you think the identification of Camilo Torres’ remains means for families still searching for missing relatives in Colombia?