Civil Society, Crime & Justice, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Army Chief Steps Down

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Nov 4 2008 (IPS) - General Mario Montoya stepped down as Colombia’s army chief, putting an end to his career Tuesday. The general is under investigation by the attorney general’s office, although he has not yet been charged.

“I have been in the service of my country for 39 years and today I can say that the journey has come to an end,” Montoya said in a brief statement to reporters.

The annual announcement of armed forces officers who are retiring is due Wednesday, and local analysts believe Montoya wanted to quit before he was forced into retirement, to preserve his image.

Montoya was widely regarded as a hero for the successful Jul. 2 operation in which the army managed to rescue former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three U.S. military contractors and 11 members of the police and military who were held hostage for years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.

No one was hurt in the covert operation, in which members of the military posed as guerrillas, humanitarian workers and reporters and deceived the hostages’ rebel guards into handing them over.

An account of Montoya’s controversial military career was published by IPS just a few days after the hostage rescue operation (https://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43086).

Praising Montoya’s service to the nation, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe announced Tuesday afternoon that he accepted the army chief’s resignation and appointed General Óscar González as the new commander.

According to the W Radio station, Uribe found out about Montoya’s decision to step down from a morning radio news broadcast.

“Montoya is under investigation,” an official in the attorney general’s office told Washington Post correspondent in Bogotá Juan Forero in September. “He has not been charged, but that is the next step.”

The Colombian government emphatically denied such reports at the time.

The Sept. 17 article added that Luis Adrián Palacio, a former member of a paramilitary militia who described Montoya’s alleged collaboration with these far-right death squads in the northwestern city of Medellín, “has a high degree of credibility.”

The case involved Operation Orion, led by Montoya in October 2002, in which troops, allegedly acting in collusion with the paramilitaries, seized control of a poor Medellín district known as Comuna 13 to “cleanse” the area of FARC and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas.

“Forced disappearances were committed during the counterinsurgency operation. There is talk of mass graves in Comuna 13,” Iván Cepeda, spokesman for the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE), told IPS.

“We welcome the general’s resignation. He has been signalled in connection with many human rights abuses,” said Cepeda.

For example, “in the late 1970s, Montoya was linked to a paramilitary structure known as the Triple A (American Anticommunist Alliance), which was active in Bogotá against opponents, lawyers and journalists,” he added.

The existence of Triple A in Colombia “was reported by members of that structure, to which Montoya belonged,” said Cepeda.

The organisation was almost contemporary with a similarly named paramilitary group made up of off-duty police officers, the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (also known as the Triple A), which operated against leftists and other opponents in that country between 1973 and 1975, ahead of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship there.

Cepeda pointed out that “his resignation has come in the middle of the growing scandal over forced disappearances that end in extrajudicial executions” to inflate the number of supposed leftist guerrillas killed by the army.

Twenty army officers and seven noncommissioned officers were sacked last week as a result of the scandal over the military’s “body counts,” in which murdered civilians are presented as insurgents killed in combat.

The decision was announced during the visit to Colombia by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

Pillay said Saturday that “We are observing and keeping a record of the number of extrajudicial killings, and it does appear systematic and widespread in my view.”

“The data we have collected indicate that we could be talking about thousands of people who have been subjected to this kind of treatment,” said Cepeda.

“These cases could be taken before the International Criminal Court at any time, if no real justice and reparations are forthcoming in Colombia,” he added.

The government has a programme that pays cash rewards to informants who provide information that contributes to successful military operations and leads to guerrilla casualties.

Mentioning the “international pressure that could be behind all of this,” Cepeda said “Colombia has received international funds to develop its security policies, and it would not be surprising if funds from the international community have gone towards financing the payment of such rewards.”

“If this is true,” said the activist,” we would be looking at something that would seriously compromise the government, and would justify a call to the governments that are financing (the Uribe adminstration’s) democratic security policy,” led by the United States and Britain.

On Friday Oct. 31, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield and Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos signed an agreement for the provision of technical support and training in human rights and international humanitarian law to the armed forces of Colombia.

The agreement includes workshops in 20 of the country’s 32 departments (provinces). The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will try to get victims to participate in the design of and follow-up for the training programmes, it was reported.

For its part, the British government issued two harshly worded statements in October against the Colombian army’s practice of extrajudicial killings of civilians.

On Oct. 1, Kim Howells in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office said “Extrajudicial killing has no place in a civilised and democratic society.”

And on Oct. 30, Foreign Office Minister Gillian Merron said “The Colombian government’s decision to dismiss a number of army officers as a result of recent extrajudicial killings and cases of criminal conspiracy is important. It is vital, not least for Colombia’s international reputation, that the government and courts continue to show a determination to deal with human rights abuses committed by members of the armed forces, and that those convicted by the civilian justice system are punished appropriately.”