Since taking office in August, new far-right Colombian president Abelardo de la Espriella has shared video after video promoting his security forces – especially operations they’ve carried out against armed groups. In some, De la Espriella speaks standing among body bags. Others feature prisoners or look like they were taken from an action film. However, there’s been growing outcry about his social media glorification of repressive policies.

Issued on: 10/11/2026 - 19:18Modified: 10/11/2026 - 19:28

On September 2, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella – who took office in early August – published a video where he appears in a room filled with 23 body bags.

In the video, De la Espriella discusses the result of an operation carried out against a dissident faction from the former guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC): "In total [...]: 23 terrorists killed. [...] Our determination to finish with you – you who are like cancer – is absolute!” The video has garnered nearly half a million views since it was posted.

Two days later, the head of state published another similar video.

In this one, there are four body bags visible in front of him as he applauds the death of “one of the country’s most dangerous criminals” – a leader of paramilitary group, Conquering Self-Defence Forces of the Sierra Nevada (ACSN).

"[Criminals] who don’t submit will end up like this,” he says, referring to the body bags. "The peace that this government believes in is the peace brought about by armed force,” he says. The video, which he pinned on his X profile, has already received two million views.

De la Espriella is a lawyer and far-right politician. During his presidential campaign, he promised to be uncompromising with armed groups – a different strategy to the previous left-wing government, which tried to engage in dialogue with these groups as part of their policy known as “total peace”.

‘They are showing off the bodies’

While some people like the hardline image promoted by the new president, the two videos featuring body bags that were published in early September also sparked a wave of criticism and disgust, including from the People’s Defender Iris Marin Ortiz, the Colombian equivalent of an Ombudswoman. On September 6, she said:

"Our country has been locked for decades in cycles of armed conflicts and organised criminality. But I don’t recall having seen a president walk amongst the dead and be proud of these deaths. [...] For decades, different armed actors have used bodies, humiliation and fear to send messages of domination and terror. This language [...] cannot become the language of the state. [...] We should not see it as normal that people’s dead bodies form the backdrop of a public declaration, nor should death become a way to show off one’s authority.”

NGOs dedicated to human rights offered a similar response. Our team spoke to Juana Cabezas at the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), a Colombian organisation. She said:

"When bodies are displayed like that, it dehumanises people. The bodies are being shown off. And there is a whole discourse legitimising the violence carried out against them."

Shocked by the images of bodies, Parliamentary Deputy Santiago Osorio Marin took the matter to the Bogota tribunal. On September 8, the tribunal ordered the videos to be taken down temporarily from the official Instagram account of the Colombian president.

However, this criticism didn’t stop the president from publishing new videos where – once again – he appears walking among body bags. The first was published on September 21, after an operation against the paramilitary group the ACSN. The second was published on October 25, after an operation carried out against one of Colombia's main guerrilla groups, ELN.

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Prisoner images reminiscent of El Salvador…

But these body bag videos aren’t all that De la Espriella has shared. He also posted a number of videos showing prisoners with their faces uncovered, their wrists and ankles bound. One video posted on August 26 shows "20 extremely dangerous criminals”, according to his post. The men – whose heads are shaved – are apparently being transferred to a different detention facility.

On October 30, the president published a similar video, this time with the caption: "Extraditions from La Picota [a prison in Bogota] don’t show any sign of stopping!"

The images are reminiscent of those shared by El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, who for the past few years has been engaged in a so-called "war” on gangs – a war that has resulted in mass criticism from human rights groups.

… and airstrike photos reminiscent of Trump communication style

The Colombian president has also been sharing videos of airstrikes, filmed from the sky, such as those on September 2 after an operation carried out against a dissident faction of former guerrilla group, FARC.

The videos are similar in style to those shared by the Trump administration when they carried out a wave of deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that Washington claimed were being used by narcotraffickers. The strikes, which started in September 2025, have resulted in more than 240 deaths, according to The Washington Office on Latin America, an American human rights NGO.

De la Espriella often uses music straight from action movies for his videos about arms being seized or arrests being made. Such is the case for one video – shared on October 2 – in which he talks about Operation Perla, aimed at combating extortion and kidnapping.

Cabezas, from NGO Indepaz, said:

"The music, the rhetoric, the images… the fact that he appears on camera in almost all of his videos… all of this allows him to create a narrative that he is an effective president, who produces results.”

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Accusations of ‘false positives’

But it isn’t just De la Espriella’s communication style that has come under criticism, but the results of his hardline, repressive policies as well.

Since September, there have been widespread condemnations of what is known in Colombia as “false positives”: extrajudicial killings of civilians carried out by the security forces, who then claim the dead were guerrillas killed in combat.

Between 1990 and 2016, Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace recorded a total of 7,837 "false positives" – most of which took place in the 2000s. The goal for the security forces tasked with combating guerrilla groups was to increase their body count in the hope of gaining a variety of advantages, including extra paid time off.

The death of an eighteen-year-old named Ricardo Andrés Rodriguez Martinez on September 21 was hauntingly reminiscent of that dark period. He was killed during operations against paramilitary group, ACSN – the same operation that De la Espriella praised while walking amongst body bags.

However according to his family, the young man was not a guerrilla fighter; he was just a day labourer.

In a video filmed in front of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Barranquilla in the north of the country, his mother, in tears, spoke directly to the president: "Abelardo, I condemn you! You killed my son unjustly!” She holds a poster that reads, “Truth and justice. My son [...] was a civilian [...]. They passed him off as a member of [ACSN], though he had nothing to do with this organisation.” The video had over a million views.

On September 26, the People’s Defender called for a “rigorous investigation" to uncover the facts about the young man’s death. She also said that she was assisting the family in pursuing the case legally.

In the meantime, the Ministry of the Defence said in a statement posted on September 24 that he “would leave it to the Office of the General Prosecutor and forensic experts to uncover all the facts and establish the motives and actions of the people present in the zone where the military deployment took place.” When we contacted the Colombian police, they responded in kind.

Cabezas continues:

"Considering the history of ‘false positives’ that we have in Colombia, this case merits a detailed investigation because no one wants this kind of event to keep happening.”

Aside from the 18-year-old, two other cases of “false positives” have been reported in recent weeks. The People’s Defender also spoke about Luis Carlos Mojica Guzman, who was killed in September. Yasmin Rodriguez was killed in October.

Fighting violence, not root cause

The criticism doesn’t end there. In mid-October, the United Nations criticised De La Espriella’s repressive tactics.

"The 2027 budget prioritises security while reducing the money allocated to institutions that work on rural development, land distribution and the reintegration of former combatants. The risk is in treating the consequences of violence without addressing the conditions that allow it to perpetuate.”

Cabezas feels similarly:

"The communities emphasise that the military actions don’t address the root of the problem if they aren’t joined by an institutional response including education, health, respect for rights, etc. So even if there are results, they will remain ephemeral. Moreover, armed groups tend to respond by exerting greater territorial control and further restricting people’s movement and access to resources. In general, communities know that when a territory becomes militarised, it goes hand-in-hand with human rights violations. In summary, the president is speaking a lot about what he calls ‘results’ but, in reality, that’s just rhetoric, aligned with his idea of what a government should do.”

Our team contacted the Office of the President of Colombia. They did not respond to any of our questions.

This article has been translated from the original in French by Brenna Daldorph.

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