Community leader Amado Torres was treasurer of the Junta de Accion Comunal – JAC, (Community Action Board) in vereda La Victoria, in San José de Apartadó, Antioquia.
Amado was very well respected for his spirit of service to the community and had previously been president of the JAC.
In 2013, one of his sons was killed by the Army and he was waiting for compensation from the state to be finalised on the basis that his son was the victim of an extrajudicial execution.
At 06.00am in the morning of Saturday 29 February 2020, armed men wearing military dress, allegedly members of the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia, broke into his house and took him away at gunpoint. His body was found later abandoned in a remote mountain area.
His family had to organise the collection of the body themselves as the local services refused to go to the location because of the dangerous security situation.
According to some reports, the cause of the killing was a dispute over the felling of trees on a piece of land belonging to the municipality. A neighbour had complained about this to an armed group which is active in the area. Amado had told his son that he had shown them the permit he had been given to cut the trees and thought that the matter had been resolved.
