Ministry of Defense confirms that ‘Mocho Tierra’ was killed in an operation in Bolívar

The Defense Ministry reported on Thursday that alias ‘Mocho Tierra’, head of the ELN’s Darío Ramírez Castro war front, was killed in an operation in southern Bolívar.

The Ministry of Defense indicated that this result was thanks to the joint and coordinated work between units of the Colombian Military Forces, the National Police and the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation. In the operative Three guerrillas of this Organized Armed Group (GAO) were also killed.

See here: In video | This was the operation in which they killed ‘Mocho Tierra’, in Bolívar

“This operation was achieved after an arduous and detailed intelligence work by the National Army, which allowed the location and action of the Colombian Air Force and the National Army Special Forces on a camp area located in the sidewalk La Cachaza from the municipality of Montecristo, south of Bolívar, where preliminary Three assault rifles, three pistols, vendors, ammunition, communications equipment, quarterly supplies and relevant documentation have been seized. All these elements will be available to the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation, “the Ministry said in a statement.

Alias ​​‘Mocho Tierra’ was considered a high-value target for the authorities and was linked, says the Ministry of Defense, with the planning and execution of terrorist actions. against the civilian population and the Public Force in the departments of Antioquia and Bolívar; He had been in this GAO for more than 27 years and currently had three fronts of the ELN under his command.

According to information from the authorities, alias ‘Mocho Tierra’ also served as head of the company ‘Heroes of Tarazá’ and was currently in charge of collecting the finances derived from drug trafficking and the illegal exploitation of mining deposits in the region, whose monthly dividends were approximately 4 billion pesos for that illegal organization.

The statement states that this individual had a judicial process for the crime of terrorism, which was carried out by a specialized Prosecutor from Medellín. Alias ​​‘Mocho Tierra’, in addition, was linked in the planning and execution of the hijacking of the Avianca Fokker plane in 1999 and the murder of several members of the Public Force.

Also – affirms Mindefensa- He was responsible for the kidnapping of Corporal Jair de Jesús Villar Ortiz in the El Diamante district of the municipality of Segovia, Antioquia, in February 2016.

“With the neutralization of aliases” Mocho Tierra “, and of the three terrorists on the war front, Darío Ramírez Castro, the command and control subsystem of the narcoterrorist organization is affected; strategic criminal expansion actions are neutralized on the departments of Antioquia and Bolívar; the planning, conduction and execution of terrorist actions against the Public Force, the civilian population and the strategic assets of the State are prevented; and the self-financing with illicit income from drug trafficking is reduced, which impacts the logistical and structural capacity of this criminal organization, “the Ministry points out.