Army victims pressure to expel former military chiefs from Colombia's peace court

Former Colombian Army Chief Mario Montoya, in a file photo

The truth about the role of the military in the Colombian armed conflict has generated enormous expectations and also controversy after the creation of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the Court created in the peace agreements between the State and the extinct guerrilla of the FARC.

Just over 1,950 members of the public force, including soldiers and generals, such as the former Army Commander, Mario Montoya, have applied to this Court, which grants them legal benefits such as parole if they provide information that helps clarify the crimes.

However, victims and organizations that represent them denounce that these high command are not complying with "providing the truth" about the executions of civilians at the hands of the Army, misnamed false positives.

And now they have gone from the complaint to the formal request that several of at least three senior officials lose the benefits they have for having joined the JEP or that they be directly expelled from the Peace Tribunal.

One of the requests is against Montoya, who has been mentioned by victims and some uniformed men in events related to macro case 03 - “deaths unlawfully presented as combat casualties by State agents” -.

Montoya was commander of the Army between 2006 and 2008, precisely the years in which there were more cases of civilian executions than the Prosecutor's Office estimates in more than 2,248 cases throughout the country.

During a voluntary hearing last February, the former Army chief avoided answering questions from the magistrates and generated outrage among the families of the victims when they asked him how to avoid this type of crime and said that "it was not easy" because the Army was entering young people " from the bottom, those of stratum one, strata two, three and four are not there ”and that it was necessary to teach them basic matters such as“ using the bathroom and cutlery ”.

His words were interpreted as a strategy to point out that the extrajudicial executions were the work of unruly soldiers, "bad apples" or isolated cases and not an act that involves the chain of command.

The victims' petition, which is 48 pages long, ensures that the systematic nature of these events has already been proven in the ordinary justice system and that Montoya, by refraining from “telling the truth, denying the knowledge he had of the events, pretending to show himself as oblivious to the illegitimate deaths presented in combat by State agents ”mocks the victims and obstructs the work of the JEP.

"To date, more than one hundred convictions have been handed down in relation to crimes carried out during Mario Montoya's command, where the existence of patterns of execution have been corroborated," says the document signed by Jaqueline Castaño, whose brother was presented as victims of extrajudicial executions in Soacha, on the outskirts of Bogotá.

But not only are actions being presented to the JEP;

Victims' attorneys filed a protection action against the Attorney General's Office before the Supreme Court of Justice to advance the investigations of a case in which the former head of the Army has been accused since 2016. "The guardianship seeks not only to finally advance with the imputation of charges to retired General Montoya for the murder of Juan Diego Montoya, a young man presented as killed in combat, but rather that the violation of these rights is recognized by the actions of the Attorney General's Office before the CSJ, ”explained Sebastián Escobar, a lawyer who take the case.

Because the general submitted to the JEP and although that does not prevent the ordinary investigation from continuing, the Prosecutor's Office refrains from depriving him of his freedom.

"In practice, this means that characters like Montoya are benefiting by remaining in the JEP and being free even though they are not providing the truth for the victims," ​​he adds.

Other cases

The former head of the Army is not the only case of this type.

Victims also presented an “incident of non-compliance” against Colonel Publio Hernán Mejía and Sergeant Efraín Andrade, former Commander and Chief of Intelligence of the La Popa Battalion, respectively.

Mejía has been sentenced to 19 years in prison and submitted to the JEP, for which he is on probation.

Despite having six legal proceedings for "homicide of a protected person, Colonel Mejía participated in a forum of presidential candidates of the Democratic Center, party of the current president Iván Duque, and through his social networks he has made pronouncements that are considered an attack on The victims. It recently generated a public debate with the Truth Clarification Commission, another of the bodies created after the peace agreement. The president of the Commission, Francisco de Roux, canceled a symposium to which Colonel Mejía had been invited. "It has denied responsibilities and the Commission has received groups of victims of those cases. Under these conditions, the Commission, out of decency with the victims and not revictimizing them, cannot provide a platform in which the colonel makes a public legitimation of his behavior, which he has already done legitimizing his behavior in other settings ”.

Both the colonel and the sergeant are mentioned in the report 'Y volveremos a Cantar' that documents 164 cases that group 303 victims of extrajudicial executions in the Colombian Caribbean in which both would have knowledge or some degree of participation.

However, according to the lawyers for the José Alvear Restrepo Collective and the Political Prisoners Committee, both have been evasive when talking about the unlawful deaths and the battalion's relationship with paramilitaries.

The response to these requests is now in the hands of the JEP's Reconnaissance Chamber, but its procedure is not simple and it must be shown that the military is lying or acting to repeat crimes;

while that happens, these high officials will be able to maintain their legal benefits to the outrage of the victims' families.