Prosecutor’s office reportedly impeach General (r) Mario Montoya on August 9

The Office of the Attorney General of the Nation has already prepared everything forpursue the imputation of charges against General (r) Mario Montoya, who is accused of having committed at least 104 “false positives” during his career in the national army. The document would be filed next Monday, August 9, on the same day the imputation hearing is due to take place.

According to a report from Noticias Caracol, the ex-soldier will be fooled aggravated homicide charges in competition with the concealment, alteration and destruction of evidence. Among these offenses, the first incurs penalties of between 40 and 50 years in prison, while the second adds between 4 to 12 additional years of detention in a penal establishment, as well as a fine of between 200 and 5,000 legal monthly minimum wage. in force.

This would be the first major step forward in the passage of the general to retirement, who has been subject to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace since 2019, by ordinary justice, after the prosecution confirmed on July 31 that it would accuse him of allegedly exerting pressure on his subordinates increase the number of combat casualties, giving rise to the scourge of extrajudicial killings, also known as false positives.

It should not be forgotten that the ex-man in uniform had been under investigation by them since 2016, and that the prosecution itself had announced that it had been ready to indict him since 2019, a question that was frustrated after the interviewee entered transitional justice. Through this, he issued a statement in two proceedings (the submission and one reserved) related to Case 03, which seeks to clarify the context of the “false positives”, still denying his involvement in the case.

Everything changed last week with the announcement made by Attorney General Francisco Barbosa, who, in an interview with Semana magazine, said that, “We will impute it as a determinant of aggravated homicide in simultaneous homogeneous competition of 104 of the so-called false positives or extrajudicial executions in Colombia, among which there are five minors ”.

In the same exchange, Barbosa stressed that Montoya put the victims in a situation of helplessness and inferiority and all of this went against Directive 300-28 issued by the General Command of the Military Forces in 2006. He also explained that this document favored arrests and demobilizations, but Montoya favored combat deaths.

“We are going to rule on this and formulate the accusation and we will transfer the case to the JEP, which works from the bottom up, they have already done it in Catatumbo, in certain areas like the La Popa battalion, in Valledupar, but the decisions of the prosecution are surely very important because they will have a top-down job, ”added the chief prosecutor, acknowledging that the process would continue through transitional justice, as there is strong evidence against Montoya. .

It should be recalled that the President of the JEP, Judge Eduardo Cifuentes, had already warned in the middle of this week that there are no conflicts of jurisdiction to which the Public Prosecutor’s Office imputes the retired general, even if he is subject to transitional justice because, as he told the newspaper El Tiempo, the relations between the two entities “are very fluid, active and necessary. One of the main contributions of the JEP are the investigations of the prosecution, and the more enriched they are, the better the results that we can give ”.

According to the explanation of the defense lawyer of the victims in the jurisdiction, Fernando Rodríguez Kekhan, the train accident is not going to happen, since the Barbosa unit is not responsible for judging, but for investigating. The fruits of this work would reach the JEP Court of First Instance, which would be the one that would advance the next stage of the legal process against Montoya. However, Cifuentes added, it is important to know that the prosecution would not be binding on the decisions of the transitional body.

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