‘I supported some units to pass them off as dead in combat’: Colonel Rincón Amado

For the first time, Colonel (r) of the Army Gabriel de Jesús Rincón Amado, who today reports to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), decided to tell the truth to a media outlet about his participation in the illegitimately presented deaths like combat casualties, misnamed “false positives.”

In an interview with the AFP news agency, Rincón recalled how the mortuary refrigerators of a Colombian town were filled with innocent civilians, who were then taken to a mass grave to make them pass as guerrillas and criminals. “I did not kill, but I did predispose for the facts to be committed,” confessed Rincón Amado.

Between 2006 and 2008, he was the operations officer of Mobile Brigade 15, with jurisdiction in the department of Norte de Santander, bordering Venezuela. At that time, the military fight with the guerrillas was so intense that, assured the military man, the municipality of Ocaña could not cope.

(Also read: Military in the JEP spoke of 72 victims of false positives in Catatumbo)

In September 2008, the mayor’s office and the curia, fearful of a health crisis, legally managed the transfer of 25 bodies that were in cold rooms to a common excavation in the Las Liscas area, said Rincón, who belonged to the Army for 22 years. In the process, some ended up being identified as the remains of civilians who had disappeared weeks ago and were wanted far away from there by their families.

Rincón affirms that with the exhumation he learned who his victims were: poor young people who were deceived and taken to Ocaña from the municipality of Soacha. “I supported some units in giving them some means (…) I’m talking about supplying them with weapons (…) to make them pass as combat dead“explained the 53-year-old man who was known to the country after telling the JEP, in a voluntary version that was leaked to the media, a cruel account of these crimes.

The colonel spent almost ten years in prison. In 2017, he was sentenced to 46 years for the crime of five young people between 20 and 25 years old, who lived in Soacha and were initially reported as “fallen in combat”. According to his account, two civilians who were acting as recruiters and with whom he had no direct contact, They took them by bus to Ocaña with the promise of earning “quick money.”

The two men and a sergeant formed the “criminal organization” that acted in this case. Back in Ocaña, the Espada unit dealt with the murders: “I never came to explain to them (…) the only thing I told them was: they are going to go out to this operation, they are going to accommodate you and deliver some people and you already know what it’s what they have to do. “

One of those young people was Victor Gómez, who was 23 years old when he traveled, deceived, to Ocaña in the company of Jader Palacio and Diego Tamayo. “They got drunk and took them to (…) a false Army checkpoint and there the recruiters handed them over (…) The next day they woke up dead“Carmenza Gómez, mother of Víctor, told AFP.

All three were featured as part of a criminal gang. “Victor had a shot to the forehead, a coup de grace,” says the 62-year-old woman, who received official protection against threats for “seeking the truth.”

(See: “Who gave the order?”: The blindfolds who fight against the forgetting of the “false positives”)

Soldiers’ rewards for these crimes included medals, rest days, complimentary résumés on the resume, or promotion projections. “I did not report and allowed the units that were there, in the combat area, to do these practices”, acknowledged Rincón.

The military organized, according to the colonel, his own award-winning body count to show results in the war against guerrillas and paramilitary drug gangs, which intensified with the arrival of Álvaro Uribe to power in 2002.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, between 1988 and 2014 2,248 “false positives” were presented. 59% of executions occurred between 2006 and 2008 under the mandate of now Senator Uribe (2002-2010), who has always denied any responsibility.

“The instigations towards the commanders (were) in such a way that they had to give results as it were, and that ‘as it was’ led them to commit (…) those murders (…) giving them signs of legality,” he said. Corner.

On these facts, José Miguel Vivanco, director of the NGO Human Rights Watch, told the news agency that several files are “forgotten in the Military Criminal Justice”, but that a “credible estimate” by the United Nations suggests up to 5,000 executions. This was not “a few bad apples, but widespread and systematic crimes,” said Vivanco. In fact, for these murders, the Prosecutor’s Office investigates 29 generals.

The accusations against General Mario Montoya

Before arriving at Mobile Brigade 15, in 2006, Rincón recalled being approached by what would later become the Army commander, the general, now retired, Mario Montoya, who also appears before the JEP.

Rincón related his meeting and assured that Montoya asked him: “How are you going to contribute to the war?” To his surprise, the commander questions him: “How many dead are you going to put?”. Rincón replied: “Dead from where, I don’t have any operational functionality.” And he continues: So he, I don’t know if in a funny but direct way, he said to me: And why don’t you get some guys out of the morgue, you saw them in uniform and report them as results? “

When he was reunited with Montoya, Rincón had already been assigned to the mobile brigade. There he approached him again: “Now he will know what war is, now he will contribute to war.” Although she noted that she never received a direct order to kill him, the colonel revealed the existence of “a top 10” of military units in which the successes were measured exclusively by dead. If someone was not “giving results, they had to leave the institution.”

(Also read: In search of the 45 false positives in the Dabeiba cemetery (Antioquia))

Montoya’s defense said that he “did not instigate absolutely anything.” “There are 2,140 military personnel linked to investigations of extrajudicial executions, which is equivalent to 0.9% of the total number of men who operated in the army in the aforementioned period, (…) showing that at no time was there a directive or directive to the Army for such atrocious acts, “explained the lawyer Andrés Garzón.

Rincón Amado before the JEP

Colonel Rincón Amado is currently telling the whole truth, in the framework of macro case 03, about deaths illegitimately presented as casualties in combat at the JEP. In 2018, after asking for forgiveness and pledging to relate the facts and make amends to his victims, he temporarily regained his freedom.

In November last year, he received state protection after a failed attack when visiting his brother. Her lawyer Tania Parra has also been threatened.

But he was not the only one, 20 of the 219 military personnel under the jurisdiction have security for the same reasons.

Now Rincon is waiting for the next stage of the transitional justice, now suspended due to the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. He said he wants to tell the mothers of these young people about the crimes committed “for favoring institutional interests.” He insisted that “it will be very difficult for us to see each other face to face, victim to victimizer.”