Colombia identifies remains of rebel group priest killed in 1966

The Colombian state entity tasked with finding and identifying more than 135,000 people who have disappeared during the course of the country’s six decades of civil conflict said on Monday it has identified the remains of Camilo Torres, a Catholic priest famous for his membership in the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group and who was killed in combat in the 1960s.

The Search Unit for Disappeared People (UBPD) was created by a 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group to take charge of archival and forensic efforts to find disappeared people. They include those forcibly disappeared by right-wing paramilitaries, rebel groups and state security forces, 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.

Torres, son of a well-connected Bogota family, was an adherent of liberation theology, a Catholic, anti-imperialist social justice movement. He joined the ELN some four months before his death and was killed in February 1966 in eastern Santander province in a skirmish with the army.

The search unit used public and classified records, including from the military justice system, to find where Torres’ remains had been interred by the military after his death, UBPD Director Luz Janeth Forero told journalists.

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 for testing from a cemetery in Bogota.

“After 60 years of disappearance, the search unit found, identified and completed a dignified handover of Father Camilo Torres,” Forero said.

The unit, which began work in 2017, has found nearly 5,000 remains, identifying and handing over some 700 to loved ones so far, Forero added. It has also found 500 living people who were reported as disappeared.

Torres’ remains were handed over to Javier Giraldo, a Catholic priest well-known for his activism on behalf of conflict victims, on Sunday, the 60th anniversary of Torres’ death, Forero said.

Giraldo, who recognized the efforts of Torres’ mother Isabel Restrepo to find her son while she was alive, said Torres will be buried at Bogota’s National University, where he studied and worked as a chaplain.

Though the Catholic Church has historically rejected Torres’ involvement with the ELN, there is now more openness to discussing his legacy as a chaplain, activist and social justice thinker, Giraldo added.