Colombia's army chief resigns in fallout from scandal over killings of civilians

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia's army chief resigns in fallout from scandal over killings of civilians
By FRANK BAJAK | Associated Press Writer
3:20 PM EST, November 4, 2008

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ The commander of Colombia's army resigned abruptly Tuesday in a widening scandal over the killing of scores of civilians, allegedly spurred by promotion-seeking officers to inflate rebel body counts.

Gen. Mario Montoya, who won wide acclaim for the bloodless hostage rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors on July 2, did not mention the scandal as a factor in his retirement after 39 years of service.

He did, however, ask his countrymen not prejudge soldiers who have been implicated in the scandal, to afford them "the right to defend themselves."

Montoya's resignation follows stinging criticism of an army policy he allegedly encouraged of promoting officers whose units kill the most leftist rebels.

Human rights groups say that policy encouraged soldiers in recent years to kill scores — perhaps hundreds — of civilians who were presented as guerrillas slain in combat. Prosecutors say they are investigating more than 90 army officers in such cases.

More:
http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/sns-bc-lt--colombia-armykillings2ndld-writethru,0,1654799.story

[Judi Lynn]

1. Colombian army chief resigns after killings probe

Colombian army chief resigns after killings probe
Tue Nov 4, 2008 4:21pm EST

By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's top army commander resigned on Tuesday after a probe tied soldiers to the disappearance of young men whose bodies were later reported as combat deaths in a scandal rocking the U.S.-backed military.

The case broke at a sensitive time for President Alvaro Uribe, a Washington ally whose multibillion-dollar U.S. aid package and proposed U.S. trade pact will likely come under tougher scrutiny whoever wins the race for the White House.

Gen. Mario Montoya stepped down days after Uribe purged 27 officers and soldiers from his army and the United Nations urged Colombia to stop security forces from killing civilians to inflate the guerrilla body count in the country's waning conflict.

~snip~
U.S. Democrats have called for Uribe to do more to protect labor union leaders before any trade deal. And some Democrats have already pushed for a reduction in the military portion of Colombia's aid package -- the largest outside the Middle East.

"The horror of this particular case... is so great that it may have an effect on some members of Congress when the time comes again to open the checkbook for more Colombian military aid," said Adam Isacson, who analyzes U.S. ties with Colombia for Washington's Center for International Policy.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4A37DP20081104

[Judi Lynn]

2. Colombia's Army Chief Steps Down

Colombia's Army Chief Steps Down

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 5, 2008; A03



SAO PAULO, Brazil, Nov. 4 -- The top commander of Colombia's U.S.-backed army resigned Tuesday after an investigation implicated three generals and other officers under his command in the killings of civilians who were later presented as enemy combatants killed in battle.

Gen. Mario Montoya was a favorite of American officials, who saw him as an able caretaker of the U.S. war against Marxist rebels and cocaine cartels. But Montoya had long been dogged by allegations that he was linked to right-wing death squads. A paramilitary fighter testified in court in August that Montoya had funneled arms to paramilitary groups, and human rights groups said he encouraged policies that led some army units to kill peasants and count them as rebels killed in combat to win favor with commanders.

Then last week, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe announced that 27 army officers and soldiers had been dismissed amid an investigation by a special military commission into the disappearances of 11 poor young men who were lured from a slum outside Bogota this year and allegedly killed by troops deep in the countryside. The bodies were found in unmarked graves days after the men were reported missing. Military commanders initially said the young men had been members of rebel groups and criminal bands.

"The pressure, after the results of the commission, left him little space to maneuver," a senior government official in Bogota, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said of Montoya. "He's obviously been under fire for a long time, from all sides, but I think it was only when there was an internal investigation done by the military itself that he made his decision."

~snip~
One critic of the army, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), called Montoya's departure "a long overdue and positive step."

"He shares responsibility for widespread and systematic abuses by the Colombian military," said Leahy, who chairs the Senate subcommittee that oversees funding for the Colombian army. "For years, our concerns about these crimes, and General Montoya's role, have been ignored."

~snip~
In Washington, José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch, said in a phone interview that the incoming U.S. government needs to be more vigilant about rights concerns.

"It is absolutely essential," he said, "that the U.S. government that is providing military aid to Colombia take full advantage of this momentum to press the military and the government of President Uribe."



More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/04/AR2008110403600.html

[struggle4progress]

3. COLOMBIA: Rights Groups Want "Body Count" General Investigated

By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Nov 5 (IPS) - ... In a statement released Wednesday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said General Mario Montoya is implicated in "a number of cases of human rights violations. These allegations must be independently and effectively investigated by the civilian courts, and General Montoya's resignation must not be used as an excuse to bury them" ...

Early this year, IPS found out that the U.S. State Department was pressing for Montoya to retire. The general is considered the main promoter of the "body count" policy, in which the numbers of guerrillas killed in combat are taken as "results" and as an indication of military success.

Since the scandal over extrajudicial executions of civilians presented as guerrilla casualties broke out in late September, the government of right-wing President Álvaro Uribe has treated the question as if it were a recent phenomenon.

The scandal was triggered by the discovery of the bodies of 11 young men who had gone missing from Soacha, a slum neighbourhood on the outskirts of Bogotá, and turned up hundreds of kilometres from their home. The corpses had been presented by the military as combat deaths ...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44593

[Judi Lynn]

4. Isn't this pathetic? The article says Uribe has treated this as if it were something new to him.

Articles discussing this filthy behavior started appearing long ago!

It's a sad, SAD world which allows evil people like this to operate.

Shocked senseless seeing HRW break down and criticise Uribe's manner of leading his country. They must feel they had to say SOMETHING finally, since the rest of the world knew about it since way back when, and all efforts to keep sweeping it back under the rug seem to fail, ultimately, as the story keeps getting out again.

From the article:

The UNHCHR has been documenting cases of extrajudicial executions since 2004, while local human rights groups have been reporting the practice since the 1970s.

Investigations of military killings of civilians have now extended to 12 of Colombia’s 32 departments (provinces), with more than 1,000 cases in the hands of the attorney general’s office and over 760 members of the military and police under investigation.

The work of the high-level committee on extrajudicial killings "also led to orders instructing military commanders to emphasise demobilisation over captures and capture over kills," adds the State Department report, referring to the left-wing insurgent groups active in the country since 1964.

But these measures do not appear to have had an effect.

According to the Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination Group (CCEEU), an umbrella that links some 200 human rights organisations, one person a day was killed in extrajudicial executions by the security forces between January 2007 and June 2008.

"Duh, drool, b-b-b-but the paramilitaries have been deactivated" is a lie we've heard lobbed in here from time to time. What a WHOPPER. A decent person would be ashamed to try to foist that crap off on DU'ers. The people to tell that drivel to would be wingers.

Also, as a very important point to underscore, from the article:

Obama’s Democratic Party, and the president-elect himself, have called much more emphatically than the governing Republican Party for Colombia -- the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world, after Israel and Egypt -- to clean up its human rights record.

In fact, Democrats in the U.S. Congress have so far blocked approval of the free trade agreement signed with this South American country, demanding that the large number of murders of trade unionists and others in this civil war-torn country be clarified and that the killings be brought to an end.

Woohooo, DEMOCRATS. Whooooooo! :woohoo:

[Judi Lynn]

5. In Colombia, Army acknowledges civilian killings

In Colombia, Army acknowledges civilian killings

The head of Colombia's Army resigned Tuesday after 20 top military officials were fired.
By Sibylla Brodzinsky | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 7, 2008 edition

~snip~
The Army's successes, however, have been muted by a macabre revelation that the Colombian military reportedly killed civilians to inflate their rebel body count in an effort to appear more successful.

Although nongovernment organizations (NGOs) have tracked the practice for years, many in Colombia are just now waking up to news about the systematic killings. As Colombian government officials act to purge military officers implicated in the killings and create a monitoring program, the padded body counts have put the military's methods under close scrutiny.

This week, Colombian officials began holding military officials accountable for the slayings. After Colombian President Álvaro Uribe summarily fired 20 top officers, including three generals and 11 colonels, Gen. Mario Montoya, head of the Army, resigned on Tuesday. The terminations follow an internal probe into the disappearance of at least 11 civilians from a Bogotá suburb, whose bodies were later found halfway across the country and reported as combat casualties.

More:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1107/p07s02-wogn.html