Colombia army chief linked to terrorists

The CIA has obtained new intelligence alleging that the head of Colombia's US-backed army collaborated extensively with right-wing militias that Washington considers terrorist organizations, including a militia headed by one of the country's leading drug traffickers. Gen. Mario Montoya has been a favorite of the Pentagon and an important partner in the US-funded counterinsurgency strategy called Plan Colombia. The $700 million a year Colombia receives makes it the third-largest beneficiary of US foreign assistance. Montoya has had a long and close association with Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, and would be the highest-ranking Colombian officer implicated in a growing political scandal in the South American country over links between the outlawed militias and top officials. The scandal already has implicated the country's former foreign minister, at least one state governor, several legislators and the head of the national police, and has shaken Uribe's government. President Bush called Uribe a "personal friend" two weeks ago during a visit to Bogotá, and his government is one of the Bush administration's closest allies in Latin America. The intelligence about Montoya is contained in a report recently circulated within the CIA. It says that Montoya and the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) jointly planned and conducted a military operation in 2002 to eliminate Marxist guerrillas from poor areas around Medellin, a city in northwestern Colombia that has been a center of the drug trade. The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for much of the country's cocaine exports. At least 14 people were killed during the operation, and opponents of Uribe allege that dozens more disappeared in its aftermath. The intelligence report includes information from another Western intelligence service and indicates that US officials have received similar reports from other reliable sources. In addition to his close cooperation with US officials on Plan Colombia, Montoya has served as an instructor at the US-sponsored military training center formerly called the School of the Americas. The Colombian general was praised by US Marine Gen. Peter Pace, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when Pace directed the regional military command for Latin America, and Montoya has been organizing a new Colombian counternarcotics task force with US funds. Eighty percent of US aid to Colombia goes to the military and police. A key finding in the CIA document was that an allied Western intelligence agency reported in January that the Colombian police, army and paramilitaries had jointly planned and conducted the military sweep in 2002 around Medellin, known as Operation Orion. After Uribe was elected in 2002 on a platform of tough measures against the rebels, he quickly organized the Medellin offensive. It was commanded by Montoya, 57, who hails from the same northern region of Colombia as the president. Operation Orion sent 3,000 Colombian army soldiers and police, supported by heavily armed helicopter gunships, through a vast shantytown area controlled by Colombia's largest left-wing rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. There have long been allegations that after the army swept through, the paramilitaries filled the power vacuum, asserting their control with killings, disappearances and other crimes. The informant cited in the CIA document reported that in jointly conducting the operation, the army, police and paramilitaries had signed documents spelling out their plans. The signatories, according to the informant, were Montoya; the commander of an area police force; and paramilitary leader Fabio Jaramillo, who was a subordinate of Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, the head of the paramilitaries in the Medellin area. Murillo, known as Don Berna, took control of the drug trade around Medellin after the death of fabled drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. He is now in a Colombian jail, and US authorities are seeking his extradition. In related news, Colombia's former intelligence chief Jorge Noguera was freed weeks after being charged with helping the AUC carry out atrocities. Judge Leonor Perdomo, a member of a council that reviews appeals, ordered Noguera's release after ruling he had been detained illegally on an arrest warrant from the attorney general's office. Perdomo ruled the arrest illegal because Mario Iguaran, the chief prosecutor, had not personally issued the request that Noguera be jailed. Iguaran said he was in "total disagreement" with the judge's decision and would continue his investigation.