The United States on Friday announced sanctions against a former Colombian general it said was involved in extrajudicial killings of civilians falsely reported as combat deaths.
The punishment means former general Mario Montoya and his family are barred from traveling to the U.S., Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Montoya used to command the Colombian army and was one of the senior officers closest to then-president Alvaro Uribe, who served from 2002 to 2010, while the government waged a fierce offensive against the leftist guerrilla army known as the FARC.
In 2023, a special court in Colombia indicted Montoya on charges of crimes against humanity over the death or disappearance of 130 civilians falsely reported as having died in clashes with guerrilla forces.
In this Oct. 17, 2018 file photo, former Army General Mario Montoya arrives to testify before a peace tribunal investigating his role in extrajudicial killings of civilians during Colombia’s long, armed conflict in Bogota, Colombia.
Fernando Vergara / AP
The State Department said it supported a 2016 peace accord between FARC and the government under which the rebels, then the most powerful guerrilla army in Latin America, laid down their arms.
This reduced violence in Colombia, which had been torn for decades by fighting between government forces, rebels and paramilitary groups linked to drug trafficking.
But Colombia’s internal conflict heated up again in recent years as FARC rebels who rejected the 2016 accord kept fighting the government, with violence also coming from another holdout guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and drug cartels, among other armed groups.
“The United States will continue efforts to support a durable and lasting peace in Colombia that recognizes the needs of victims and survivors,” the State Department said in a statement.
Earlier this year, a 10-year-old boy died in a drone attack targeting soldiers amid a wave of guerrilla violence in Colombia. The grenade fell on a soccer field in the town of El Plateado, a stronghold of the Central General Staff (EMC) rebel group which broke away from FARC.
Guerrillas are increasingly using commercially available drones to drop explosives on rivals, the BBC reported. In June, the Colombian army reported 17 drone attacks over six weeks, with no resulting deaths. Drones have also been used by Colombia’s government to increase surveillance, the BBC reported.
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