Prosecutor’s office to charge General (r) Mario Montoya 104 “false positives”

The office of the Attorney General of the nation will accuse the commander (r) of the army, General Mario Montoya, of having been the author of the “false positives” of Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s second term. According to the same attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, Montoya encouraged the murder of innocent people in order to obtain benefits given the results.

“We will attribute it as a determining factor for the aggravated homicide in a simultaneous homogeneous competition of 104 of the so-called false positives or extrajudicial executions in Colombia, including five minors”, declared the prosecutor exclusively with Semana.

He also told the media 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. Barbosa himself explained that this document privileged arrests and demobilizations, but Montoya privileged combat deaths.

This is why the victims of the “false positives” were given by the need to present results to the commandos, in fact this was recognized by the perpetrators who accepted that they did so because they also received prizes and incentives for presenting the dead.

Barbosa insisted in Semana that the evidence against Montoya Uribe is overwhelming. “We will 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 surely the decisions of the prosecutor’s office are very important because they will have a job from top to bottom ”.

Now, after the indictment and the request for a hearing by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the procedure will go to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) to conduct its procedure since Mario Montoya has been subject to this justice since 2018. For this reason, an insurance measure will not be requested because, explained Barbosa, they are limited by the statutory law of the JEP.

After that, the peace tribunal will make its findings on the matter and assume its jurisdiction and the prosecutor’s office will get there, unless Montoya leaves the JEP. For now, the accusing entity is preparing other charges against the police but also against former members of the Farc.

Finally Barbosa indicated that neither Álvaro Uribe Vélez nor Juan Manuel Santos come under their jurisdiction because they are gauged, this means that they have their own judges and that is why they cannot take decisions against them.

The victims’ demand would be met

Victims of extrajudicial killings can no longer wait to see progress in cases involving retired General (r) Mario Montoya Uribe. On July 30, the group called on the attorney general’s office to stop delaying the process and to call a hearing to lay charges against the man in uniform.

The request was made by lawyer Sebastián Escobar, a civilian representative of a group of victims of the “false positives”, who assured that there is sufficient evidence that would link the man in uniform to the murder of 50 people. In addition, he pointed out that the process is being delayed, although the attorney general’s office has assured, since the beginning of 2019, that the preliminary investigation against Montoya is fully completed and that the next step is the imputation of the charges.

However, it should not be forgotten that in this process there have been changes which have slowed down the lawsuits. One of them is that the JEP came to examine the case and the prosecution assured at the time that when this happened the work of the entity was paralyzed.

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