Warlord: Ex-Colombia army chief aided militias


By FRANK BAJAK, The Associated Press 6:09 p.m. March 3, 2009

BOGOTA — A Colombian warlord awaiting sentencing in New York City after pleading guilty to drug-trafficking charges says former army chief Gen. Mario Montoya mounted a joint operation with his illegal, far-right militia in late 2002.

Diego Fernando Murillo, better known as "Don Berna," says in an affidavit filed in a U.S. federal court in Manhattan last week that his fighters entered the hillside Medellin slum Comuna 13 in "an alliance" with troops under Montoya's command.

The affidavit supports a 2007 Los Angeles Times story that cited a leaked CIA memo accusing Montoya, then-commander of the Army's 4th Brigade, of joining forces with Murillo in the operation to remove leftist rebels from the barrio.

It was filed along with a motion by Murillo's attorney, Margaret Shalley, seeking to prevent the mother of a young man killed in Comuna 13 from testifying prior to his sentencing in hopes of receiving restitution.

The affidavit's existence was first reported Tuesday by El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald's Spanish-language daily.

Montoya resigned as Colombia's army chief in November in the fallout of a scandal over extrajudicial killings by soldiers in which three generals were fired that drew a rebuke from the U.N.'s top human rights officials.

It was the military's biggest purge in decades.
President Alvaro Uribe subsequently named Montoya ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

Montoya did not immediately return a telephone message left with his secretary at the Colombian Embassy in Santo Domingo on Tuesday.

Colombia's armed forces deny ties with the far-right militias, though human rights groups say they have long worked hand-in-glove with illegal private armies including the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, of which Murillo was a senior officer.

Prosecutors on Tuesday reaffirmed murder charges against an ex-general who various paramilitary leaders say worked closely with them, Rito Alejo del Rio. A former close associate of Uribe, he has been jailed since September.

The far-right militias, known locally as "paramilitaries," were initially formed by ranchers and drug traffickers to counter leftist rebel kidnappers. But in the mid-1990s they grew into powerful regional mafias that stole land, killed alleged rebel sympathizers and infiltrated national politics.

Colombian authorities documented serious abuses in the Comuna 13 operation, including at least nine killings. The human rights group Corporacion Juridica Libertad says at least 88 people were forcibly disappeared, and witnesses have testified that victims were ferried out of the neighborhood in vehicles past police and army checkpoints.

In the affidavit, Murillo says that as commander of the group known as the Bloque Cacique Nutibara, "I gave the order not to commit any unnecessary serious crimes in area, but I later found out that excesses were committed."

He also says his group "was funded by contributions from wealthy businessmen, business and hotel owners; taxes on buses and large businesses; money from siphoning gasoline from a pipeline; and taxes collected from narcotics traffickers."

Before joining the AUC, Murillo was a feared Medellin drug trafficker, working with the late drug lord Pablo Escobar before turning against him and joining a rival band called the PEPES that was widely credited with helping authorities hunt down Escobar and kill him in 1993.

The U.S. State Department declared the AUC a foreign terrorist organization in 2001.
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Associated Press Writer Libardo Cardona contributed

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