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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian authorities said they are 99 percent sure they have successfully identified the bodies of three Ecuadorean press workers kidnapped and killed in a restless border region.
The Defense Ministry said Friday night on Twitter that dental records provided by family members who traveled to Colombia assisted forensic experts in the task of identification.
The bodies were found Thursday close to where the press workers were likely being held, but DNA testing continues.
"In a maximum period of 48 hours we will be able to know the identities of the bodies found in the south of the country. The murderers of these people surrounded the pits where they were found with mines," the ministry wrote after retrieving the bodies.
Family members said in a statement that the journalists of Ecuador's El Comercio newspaper were kidnapped in that country on March 26 and murdered in Colombia. They were investigating a rise in drug-fueled violence along the border when they disappeared.
But relatives also appeared to protest the identification process, saying authorities had not given them conclusive evidence and had originally told them that the process would continue until Tuesday.
They called on Colombia's National Institute of Forensic Medicine to say why it had publicly transmitted information and asked Ecuador's Foreign Ministry and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to intervene.
"The events of the last few hours set a precedent about the lack of seriousness for the treatment of this case and sow suspicion about the concealment of information to family members," they said. "These conditions affect confidence in the rest of the actions carried out and being carried out by the Colombian state for the investigation."
In a proof-of-life video the men identified their captors as members of a dissident arm of the now disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Fears that reporter Javier Ortega, photographer Paul Rivas and their driver Efrain Segarra had been killed surfaced in April when a Colombian TV network said it had received gruesome photos purporting to show the bodies of the men. Forensic officials were not able to confirm the authenticity of the images, but officials later announced they had concluded the press workers were killed.
Military operations along Colombia's border with Ecuador have led to the capture of several individuals belonging to the rebel group but the leader remains at large.
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