The controversial military career of Mario Montoya, the former army commander pointed out by Otoniel to collaborate with the paramilitaries

The legal process against Dairo Antonio Úsuga, alias Otoniel, is moving in a direction that would uncover facts that, so far, are only known in detail to him. Last Tuesday, the aforementioned criminal appeared before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and, in the middle of what he said, told General (r) Mario Montoya Uribe of having developed joint operations with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

The former head of the Gulf Clan was expanding the information he has in his hands about the alleged relationship between the Centauros Bloc and some senior army commanders to commit false positives, when the name Montoya Uribe came up. This, however, is not the first time that the presence of that former soldier has entered into the conversation of false positives, on the contrary, he has already had to face Colombian justice for these events.

“Liters of blood, tanks of blood, I don't care about anything about catches, they have to give me are deaths in combat whatever it takes place,” retired colonel Gabriel de Jesús Rincón was heard to say when he paraphrased what would be Montoya's orders to his soldiers. Mario Montoya Uribe was commander of ten units of the Colombian army between 1991 and 2008.

He is not only remembered for his controversial statements, but also for his participation in military actions such as Operation Check, Operation Phoenix and Operation Orion. Montoya was an important piece of Alvaro Uribe's government, in 2006, in fact, the then president appointed him commander of the National Army.

In 2002, he was involved in controversy when the Bojayá massacre occurred in Chocó. In the middle of a fight with the AUC, the missing FARC threw gas cylinders at a church where civilians were sheltering from the exchange of attacks against both armed groups. Witnesses to the events, they claimed to have seen Montoya meeting with the paramilitary group.

“I demanded operational results, I demanded operations; not casualties. No one can say that General Montoya had been killed or that I found out that they had killed,” Montoya said when he appeared before the JEP in 2020. It was in 2008 when the uniformed man submitted his resignation to the National Army, precisely when the then head of state faced the hundreds of questions posed to him by the deaths of civilian citizens who were presented as alleged guerrillas.

At the time, Montoya won the title of 'hero of the homeland' by Uribe Vélez. Montoya's actions, in fact, meant recognition as six Crosses of Boyacá, prizes awarded by the Colombian State.

In July 2021, it was reported that he would be charged with the execution of 104 people who had been brought before the authorities as criminals but who, according to witnesses and victims, were civilians. “We are going to charge him as the determiner for aggravated homicide (...) out of 104 so-called false positives (...) All material authors were active members of the Army,” Attorney General Francisco Barbosa told Semana magazine.

According to JEP figures, more than 6,400 civilians were killed by the National Army in exchange for benefits and incentives from the State. “The thing is that I can't go there recognizing a crime I haven't committed. I'm not going to do it. They're going to judge me, they're going to convict me. But what do I do? If I recognize, it means I was commanding a criminal organization. So my army is a criminal organization?” , Montoya said in an interview with Martín Nova, a writer who left the testimony reflected in his book Military Memories, in one of the few interviews he has given since he retired from the Army.

“Since July 17, 2018, General Mario Montoya Uribe voluntarily presented to the JEP and signed his submission to that jurisdiction. The judicial systems were made so that one does not go through the other and that is why I ask you honorable magistrate to refuse to hold this hearing, but if you believe that you should not refuse it, I am already asking you that there must be a conflict of jurisdictions, which must be resolved by the Constitutional Court,” he said. Montoya's lawyer, Andrés Garzón,

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