for ransom. However, it was not clear from the FARC statement what would happen to the civilians it still held in captivity. Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos used Twitter to welcome the move as a "necessary, if insufficient, step in the right direction". Human rights concerns FARC was accused of committing violations of human rights by numerous groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations as well as by the Colombian, U.S. and European Union governments. A February 2005 report from the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights mentioned that, during 2004, "FARC-EP continued to commit grave breaches [of human rights] such as murders of protected persons, torture and hostage-taking, which affected many civilians, including men, women, returnees, boys and girls, and ethnic groups." Extrajudicial executions FARC consistently carried out attacks against civilians specifically targeting suspected supporters of paramilitary groups, political adversaries, journalists, local leaders, and members of certain indigenous groups since at least as early as 1994. From 1994 to 1997 the region of Urabá in Antioquia Department was the site of FARC attacks against civilians. FARC has also executed civilians for failing to pay "war taxes" to their group. In 2001, Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced that the FARC-EP had abducted and executed civilians accused of supporting paramilitary groups in the demilitarized zone and elsewhere, without providing any legal defense mechanisms to the suspects and generally refusing to give any information to relatives of the victims. The human rights NGO directly investigated three such cases and received additional information about over twenty possible executions during a visit to the zone. According to HRW, those extrajudicial executions would qualify as forced disappearances if they had been carried out by agents of the government or on its behalf, but nevertheless remained "blatant violations of the FARC-EP's obligations under international humanitarian law and in particular key provisions of article 4 of Protocol II, which protects against violence to the life, physical, and mental well-being of persons, torture, and ill-treatment". The Colombian human rights organization CINEP reported that FARC-EP killed an estimated total of 496 civilians during 2000. Use of gas cylinder mortars and landmines The FARC-EP has employed a type of improvised mortars made from gas canisters (or cylinders), when launching attacks. According to Human Rights Watch, the FARC-EP has killed civilians not involved in the conflict through the use of gas cylinder mortars and its use of