Military Madness > Navy Seal Speaks Out; Horror Drone Attack on Girls Playing Volleyball; NARCO State Mexico Arrests former AG

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Navy SEAL in Bin Laden raid Rob O'Neill says the rest of the world

is 'mocking' the US while it 'fights over pronouns' 

Military morale has been crushed and veterans are asking what they were fighting for a year on from the Afghanistan pullout

O'Neill has issued a warning to the US and the Afghan people, 12 months on

The two-time Silver Star winner says the Taliban has only been emboldened 

He says rights of Afghan women are now where they were in September 2001

Believes US legitimacy is steadily declining in the wake of the withdrawal

China is 'mocking' the U.S. because we are 'fighting ourselves about what pronouns to use'

With veteran suicide rights still high and in the midst of a military recruitment crisis, he says morale is at a low point

By WILLS ROBINSON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 

PUBLISHED: 11:55 EDT, 21 August 2022 | UPDATED: 16:22 EDT, 21 August 2022

The full story can be found at the Daily Mail

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O'Neill didn't even mention the drone strikes on girls playing volleyball...

U.S. condemns drone strike that killed teen girls

playing volleyball in Syria

By Adam Schrader

Zozan Zedan has been identified as one of the girls killed in the drone strike while playing volleyball.

Photo courtesy of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria

Aug. 20 (UPI) -- Maj. Gen. John Brennan, the commander of Operation Inherent Resolve, condemned a drone stroke this week that killed four teen girls and injured several others who were playing volleyball.

Brennan said in a statement Friday that the girls who were killed were active in a United Nations educational outreach program in Hasakah.

"I condemn this attack and any others that kill and injure civilians. Such acts are contrary to the laws of armed conflict, which require the protection of civilians. We extend our condolences to the families of those killed and sympathies to those injured," Brennan said.

"The increase in military hostilities in northern Syria is creating chaos in a fragile region where the threat of [the Islamic State] remains present. We call for immediate de-escalation from all parties and an end to activities that put at risk the significant battlefield gains the Coalition has made against ISIS."

Brennan did not name which party conducted the Thursday drone strike but officials with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria on Saturday alleged the teens were killed by a "Turkish occupation aircraft targeting an educational center for girls."

The strike happened in the village of Shammoka, about 1.2 miles from the base of the international coalition forces.

Instead of choosing a military target, they chose to kill a bunch of girls who were doing good in the world. That's military madness!

The AANES also revealed photographs of the teen girls, born between 2002 and 2004, who were identified as Rania Atta, Zozan Zeidan, Dylan Ezz El-Din and Diana Alo.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement that 11 other people were injured in the attack.

The Turkish government views the People's Protection Units of the Syrian Democratic Forces as terrorist groups linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

Mexican authorities arrest former AG over 2014 disappearance of 43 students

By Clyde Hughes

   

A member of the Latinos en Accion, a group that advocates for rights of Latinos in the United States, reads a poem dedicated to the 43 students that disappeared in Mexico in September 2014, during a protest on the steps of the Eagleton Federal Courthouse in St. Louis on December 3, 2014. File Photo by BIll Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 20 (UPI) -- Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam is the highest-ranking official to be charged in the mass kidnapping of 43 students in 2014 that shocked the country.

The investigation, which has been hounded for its slow pace and charges of a coverup by former President Enrique Peña Nieto, was called a "crime of state" by the investigation point person Alejandro Encinas.

Encinas said the disappearances also involved police, the armed forces and civilian officials along with a drug gang in Guerrero state.

The collusion between the police, armed forces, civilian officials, and a major crime gang just verifies that Mexico is a failed, narco-state.

The students from the rural Ayotzinapa teachers' college had loaded buses to attend a protest rally when they were attacked by police and other gunmen. Murillo Karam, who was investigating the crime in 2015, said the police handed the students over to the Guerreros Unidos gang, which burned their bodies at a dump in the nearby city of Cocula.

Over the years of the investigation, authorities have recovered the bodies of three of the missing students.

"There is no indication the students are alive," Encinas said, according to CNN. "On the contrary, all the testimonies and evidence prove they were cunningly killed and disappeared."

Maureen Meyer, the vice president of programs at the Washington Office on Latin America, said Murillo Karam's arrest Friday was a positive step forward in the long-running investigation.

"[The arrest] is a clear sign of the National Prosecutor's Office's interest in fully investigating the obstruction of justice and human rights violations that occurred and holding officials at all levels accountable for their illegal actions," Meyer said, according to The Washington Post.

A Quick Sketch to Outline the Scandal in Canada That is Casting Dark Shadows Across the Face of Justin Trudeau

Corruption is Everywhere

- Even in the Office of Canada's Far-Left Mr. Sunshine

National Observer

For 16 years the global engineering and construction giant SNC-Lavalin cultivated a close relationship with the Muammar Gaddafi family, particularly his son Saadi.

According to criminal charges, for almost a decade of that period, up until the fall of the regime, SNC paid Saadi Gaadafi almost $50 million in exchange for billions of dollars in airport, pipeline, and water infrastructure projects.

Saadi Gadaffi

Oh, and prisons.

Let's go over that again.

A Canadian company is charged with bribing a family infamous around the world for murder, torture, rape, abductions, and widespread human rights abuses, and doing it for its own profit. They didn't stop until the regime collapsed in 2011 and Swiss authorities came knocking. Charges were laid in April 2015.

A corruption prosecution of this gravity is unprecedented in Canada.

Moreover, had the Libyan regime not collapsed and the bribery discovered, would this company still be in the game, still arranging prostitute parties and funnelling money to the Gaddafis?

It's highly significant that SNC is no stranger to disciplinary action over its conduct. During the 2001-2011 period of the alleged Libyan bribery, the company has:

been barred from bidding on Asian Development Bank projects for fabricating qualifications and documents (2004);

settled corruption allegations with the African Development Bank over bribes in Mozambique (2008) and Uganda (2010);

bribed Canadian officials with $22.5 million in relation to a McGill hospital contract (2009);

been credibly found by the World Bank as participating in high-level corruption in Bangladesh in 2009-2010, and entered into a voluntary debarment from World Bank-financed projects. (SNC-Lavalin has since been acquitted of criminal charges, but the voluntary debarment remains in place);

entered into a voluntary agreement to compensate seven Quebec municipalities for obtaining contracts through questionable means (1996-2011);

made illegal federal election campaign donations (2004-2011), entering into a voluntary compliance agreement with the federal elections commissioner

SNC knowingly enabled and overlooked monstrous tyranny and abuse.

The company cannot pretend it was unaware of Gaddafi's vicious cruelty while expensing his son Saadi Gaddafi's prostitutes, lavish lifestyle, and showering him with millions of dollars a year.

The company financed his soccer aspirations and sponsored his team despite widespread reports that, just a few years earlier, his bodyguards had opened fire on soccer fans for booing a referee favouring him. Between 20 and 50 were killed in the ensuing chaos.

Then there was Bashir al-Rayani, a professional soccer coach who challenged Saadi Gaddafi in 2005, only to disappear shortly before his bludgeoned body was dumped near his home.

A brief search and one can find more horror stories associated with SNC-Lavalin. But that should be sufficient to indicate that this company has little or no regard for the law or for any of the myriad people adversely affected by their relentless bribery.

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper put in place a law that forbids companies convicted of corruption from bidding on federal infrastructure contracts for 10 years. But as soon as Justin Trudeau and his very Liberal Party won the election in 2015, SNC began intense lobbying of the government to find a solution that didn't involve going to trial.

SNC and the very Liberals cam up with a law that is used in a few countries, including Britain, called Deferred Prosecution Agreement. It is basically a plea deal. The very Liberals snuck the new law into the bowels of a large omnibus federal budget, and it passed without scrutiny in the Spring budget of 2018.

However, Canada's senior Public Prosecutor decided it wasn't in the best interests of Canadians, or probably anyone else in the world, to offer SNC a DPA. Two weeks later, Canada's Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Reybould, agreed with her and informed SNC that they would not be getting a DPA offer.

Well, __it hit the fan! SNC began frantic lobbying of the Trudeau government, which, in turn, began pressuring the Attorney General to reconsider. For months, everyone from the Prime Minister, his senior staff, the Clerk of the Privy Council, pressed Wilson-Reybould to reconsider.

SNC-Lavalin threatened the government with thousands of lost jobs and even moving its headquarters from Montreal to London. Trudeau panicked. One of the very first things he mentioned to the AG when he next met her was to remind her of the job losses and that he was the MP for Papineau, a riding in Montreal where many of those workers lived.

The AG asked the PM if he was interfering with her decision and he backed off. Meanwhile the PM's Chief of Staff, Gerald Butts informed the AG's Chief of Staff that there was no solution that did not involve interference.

From here the sort gets even less believable. In January, a Halifax MP and cabinet minister, Scott Brison. suddenly decided he had to retire. He hadn't talked about it to anyone. People were amazed that no-one had any idea he was thinking of retiring. I strongly suspect that he had no idea himself until just before it happened. 

This resulted in a mini cabinet shuffle, and guess who go shuffled? The Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould. She was replaced with a new AG, an MP, would you believe, from Montreal, who seems a lot more amenable to offering SNC-Lavalin a DPA. Except, __it hit the fan again.

Someone leaked the story to Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper and all hell breaks loose. Trudeau flatly denies the story saying it is completely untrue, that no pressure was applied to the AG, she was not threatened, they just had to have a cabinet shuffle because Scott Brison resigned. 

A few days later, Jody Wilson-Reybould resigned from her new cabinet position stating that she has lots confidence in the Prime Minister. 

The parliamentary justice committee, dominated by very Liberals was pressured into holding investigations into the affair. At first they didn't want to allow anyone of any importance to speak to the committee. A brilliant, young CBC digital reporter suggested the inquiry into the fox and the henhouse was restricting evidence to the mouse and the rusty lawnmower. I think she nailed it.

Finally they agreed to call the clerk of the Privy Council, Canada's top bureaucrat, and, supposedly, non-political. His testimony was anything but non-political. Eventually, JWR, herself, got to testify, although limited somewhat by Cabinet Privilege. 

With documentation, she contradicted some of the Clerk's testimony and exposed the pressure, the political angle, and the fact that she told the PM she had made up her mind way back in September and that all the pressure was tantamount to political interference, and it had to stop. It stopped over Christmas holidays and immediately after she was moved from the portfolio.

Whether she was threatened with removal she will not say because of cabinet privilege. The Clerk was invited back to Committee to rebut JWR's testimony but before he could do that another high profile female cabinet minister resigned. Jane Philpott was a former health minister and Indigenous-services minister, and was president of the federal Treasury Board when she quit the cabinet. Philpott was widely seen as one of Trudeau's most capable ministers.

Philpott quit in solidarity with JWR stating that she cannot support the government line on the whole affair. The government accused her of being JWR's friend!!! Like it just a couple of emotional women, not two of the most respected and capable ministers in the very Liberal government. The rest of his cabinet, like trained monkeys, chanted the mantra - "the PM has my full confidence!"

Trudeau refuses to accept responsibility for the affair and, in all probability, will find a way out of the situation for SNC-Lavalin to avoid justice. He has followers who believe so emphatically in his righteousness that they cannot see what is so plainly visible. He's a politician. A very ambitious politician. Canadian PM is nowhere near the pinnacle of his political ambitions. He, I believe, is determined to be the saviour of the world.

More on Trudeau later... meanwhile -

SNC Lavalin had gone to court seeking a review of the decision by the federal director of public prosecutions last fall to not enter negotiations so desperately sought by the firm’s executives. Today, the Federal Court has struck down SNC-Lavalin‘s appeal.

The new Attorney General has a hard decision to make, and while he may get lots of encouragement to make it, chances are, if he decides to offer SNC a plea deal, his encouragers will be nowhere to be found come October and federal election time.

The Other Mind-Blowing Testimony Today - Justin Trudeau is in Deep Trouble

While Michael Cohen was sabotaging Donald Trump's Presidency, Canada's Justin Trudeau was being lambasted in a Parliamentary Committee by his ex-Attorney General. Both are astonishing stories. You can read about the USA mess just about anywhere; here is the mind-blowing Canadian story that could bring down Justin Trudeau.

The story has to do with one of Canada's largest engineering companies, SNC-Lavalin. It was charged last year with paying bribes to Muammar Qaddafi for a construction contract in Libya. The decision was made to prosecute SNC-Lavalin on corruption charges.

The problem here becomes very political. SNC-Lavalin is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, and employs thousands of people in Quebec and across Canada. If found guilty, the punishment would restrict SNC-Lavalin from bidding on any Canadian Government contracts for 10 years. They could continue to bid on international contracts but the Canadian suspension would certainly result in a lot of jobs lost, many of them in Quebec. I believe the company may have threatened the government that it might pull out of Canada completely.

Quebec is the centre of the Liberal Party's world. It usually wins a lot of seats in that province, and without it, cannot win enough seats to form a national government. Trudeau and the Prime Minister's Office is keenly aware of the dangers with a federal election due in October. So, what does he do? He, and at least 10 other people from the PMO, the Privy Council, and Ministry of Finance begin to twist the arm of Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Jody Wilson-Raybould (JWR) was appointed Attorney General of Canada with great fanfare, being a woman, and an  indigenous woman. Trudeau chose his cabinet very carefully, based on their sex, colour, sexual persuasion, and religion. 50% women, lots of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and who knows what - but definitely no Christians, and several gay people. 

JWR was one of two indigenous people in the cabinet, the other had to resign for sexual improprieties. 

I have long complained that the cabinet was based on appearance and that some very capable and talented people were overlooked because they happened to be white men. But it must have come as quite a shock to Trudeau to find that one of those women is principled, excruciatingly honest, and has a high degree of integrity. 

After dozens of attempts to persuade her to break the law and interfere in the judicial process, he finally shuffled her out of the Attorney-General's office and demoted her to a lesser ministry. She did not take that well, at least if you are a Liberal. She decided to resign from cabinet and either she, or someone close to her, leaked the story that she had been improperly influenced by senior people to interfere in the legal system for the benefit of SNC-Lavalin and, of course, the Liberal Party.

Trudeau flat out denied the story but the pressure was on from opposition parties to hold inquiries. The Justice Committee was the first to bite, but immediately restricted the guest list to people who had nothing to do with the affair. One reporter on Twitter reported it something like this: The committee investigating the fox and the hens is restricting testimony to the mouse and the rusty old shovel.

JWR stood in the House of Commons and expressed her desire to testify, but claimed she was restricted by solicitor-client privilege as well as cabinet privilege. After some considerable pressure, Trudeau released her from those privileges and allowed her to speak. She spoke this afternoon and it was stunning.

CBC:

Wilson-Raybould said she was contacted by 11 officials in the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council and Finance Minister Bill Morneau's office on the matter when she served as justice minister and attorney general.

"For a period of four months from September to December 2018, I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role as the attorney general of Canada in an inappropriate effort to secure a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with SNC-Lavalin."

Wilson-Raybould said she was "hounded" by various officials through phone calls, meetings and text messages.

'Veiled threats'

"Within these conversations there were express statements regarding the necessity of interfering in the SNC-Lavalin matter, the potential of consequences, and veiled threats if a DPA was not made available to SNC-Lavalin," she said.

The very fact that JWR was demoted in cabinet would seem to verify that she was not just threatened but the PM made good on those threats.

I have always thought that if Trudeau were leader of an autocratic country, that he would be a brutal dictator.

She chronicled a series of meetings, including one with Trudeau and Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick on Sept. 17, 2018. She told him that she had made a decision not to overturn the decision from the director of the Public Prosecution Service Kathleen Roussel to proceed with criminal prosecution against SNC-Lavalin.

The prime minister cited potential job losses and the possible move by the company, and asked her to "help out." The clerk then made the case for a DPA and reminded there was an election coming in Quebec.

"At that point, the prime minister jumped in, stressing that there is an election in Quebec, and that, 'I am an MP in Quebec, the MP for Papineau,'" she recounted. 'I was quite taken aback."

At that point, Wilson-Raybould said, she posed a direct question to Trudeau while looking him straight in the eye, asking if he was politically interfering with her role and her decision as the attorney general.

"I would strongly advise against it," she told the committee she warned Trudeau, who responded, "No, no, no, we just need to find a solution."

Apparently, allowing justice to take its course was not a solution!

This is a huge problem for Justin Trudeau and his very Liberal Party, as opinion polls are already showing a downward trend. It also puts the newly appointed AG in a nasty position - interfere with the judicial system or lose the next election. If he does choose to interfere, it may well cost the very Liberal Party the next election anyway.

Trudeau has inspired a lot of left-leaning people. They have faith that he is one of the people most likely to save the planet from global warming, from war, and from nationalism. Finding out that he is a hypocrite, on top of several stupid stunts he has pulled, hits the faithful very hard. But he is first and foremost a politician and winning the next election is the most important thing. So important that he is willing to pressure others to break the law and act in a manner not fit for a minister in the government of Canada.

This is also a problem for Canada's mainstream media. They are head-over-heels in love with Trudeau and his very Liberal Party and are loath to bring meaningful criticism against him. For instance - last December, when the CFO of Huawei was arrested in Vancouver on a USA warrant, Trudeau answered complaints from China by lecturing them on the fact that Canada is a nation of laws and there is no political interference in those laws. He said that a few times. He said that while he was pressing JWR to interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. The MSM seems to have conveniently forgotten that.

Expect lots of personal attacks in the MSM against JWR as they try to mitigate the disaster on the very Liberal Party.

Canadian PM in Hot Water After Accusation of Interference in Judicial System

Corruption is Everywhere - SNC-Lavalin and the Prime Minister of Canada though?

C'est impossible!

Justin Trudeau's often used response to China's complaints about Canada arresting Huawei's CFO on a warrant from the USA is: Canada is a under the rule of law, there is no political interference in the rule of law.

That was then, what, two months ago, and this is now. 

The Globe and Mail newspaper reported last week that Trudeau’s aides pressed Jody Wilson-Raybould, the then Attorney General of Canada, to help avoid a prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on charges stemming from alleged business activities in Libya.

The newspaper said Wilson-Raybould was shuffled to the veterans-affairs portfolio, just two weeks ago, after she refused to get the public prosecutor to negotiate a remediation deal with the company, a means of acknowledging wrongdoing without a criminal conviction.

The Liberal government maintains that while discussions on the matter took place with Wilson-Raybould, she wasn’t pressured or told to issue a directive to the prosecutor.

Trudeau's response to the allegations: “The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false,” Trudeau told reporters when asked about the allegations.

“Neither the current nor the previous attorney general was ever directed by me nor anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.”

Reporters noted that the questions raised in the article are not only about “directing” action. “Not necessarily direct, prime minister. Was there any sort of influence whatsoever?” one reporter asked.

Trudeau responded by saying again that “at no time did we direct the attorney general, current or previous, to take any decision whatsoever in this matter.”

He stuck to that line for days and refused to clarify whether there was any persuasion that might be less than 'directing' involved. One has to wonder, did someone threaten to demote Wilson-Raybould if she didn't act in the best interests of SNC-Lavalin, or was her demotion rather an act of discipline for a Minister who put ethics above politics? Was it intended to keep other ministers in line?

Wilson-Raybould refused to answer reporters questions citing attorney-client privilege. She could have easily ended the whole scandal by saying that there was no political interference, which would not have violated attorney-client privilege, but she didn't.

In fact, the day she was demoted from AG to Dept of Veterans Affairs, she wrote on her MP's web site: The role of the Attorney General of Canada carries with it unique responsibilities to uphold the rule of law and the administration of justice, and as such demands a measure of principled independence. It is a pillar of our democracy that our system of justice be free from even the perception of political interference and uphold the highest levels of public confidence. 

The mention of political interference is curious at best and seems out of place were it not there for a specific reason. 

Opposition Leader Andrew Sheer has called on Trudeau to waive attorney-client privilege. He has not responded publicly to that. Sheer also called for an emergency Justice Committee meeting to investigate. That committee is made up primarily of Trudeau's Liberals, so one cannot expect much from them.

Meanwhile, two high profile NDP MPs have called on the Ethics Commissioner to investigate the allegations, and just today, he has agreed. 

The consequences could be huge as a finding of political interference could possibly result in criminal charges, and would certainly reveal an endemic hypocrisy in the PMO (Prime Minister's Office), as well as a 'special' relationship, bordering on corruption, between the Liberal Party and SNC-Lavalin.

It would also leave Trudeau out-on-a-limb in his dealings with China and his claims of political non-interference in the Canadian justice system. Trudeau had already angered the Chinese government with his leadership in sending a letter of complaint about the way the Chinese were treating Uighur (Muslim) people in western China. Today, the government admitted that trade relations with China are likely to slow for the foreseeable future.

Other consequences for Canada could be substantial as SNC-Lavalin employs thousands of people across the country and around the world. If they were found guilty of corruption, it would render SNC-Lavalin ineligible for any Canadian government contracts for 10 years. The possibility of a complete collapse of the company and thousands of people thrown out of work is neither good for the economy, not is it good for Liberal re-election plans.

I am not without sympathy for SNC-Lavalin as it was doing business the way business is done in so many countries around the world - bribery, kickbacks, corruption. You can't do business on an international scale without it. Nevertheless, it must be fought against. We can do better.

Colombia's Military Shot Thousands of Civilians Instead of FARC, Intentionally

Apparently, this is not news to anyone in South America, but it's the first I heard of this insane practice

Colombia: New Evidence Against Ex-Army Chief, Says HRW

Posted By: Editoron, Santiago Times

Attorney General Should Move Ahead with Prosecution

Washington, DC – Previously unpublished evidence strongly suggests that a former top commander of Colombia’s military did not take reasonable steps to stop or punish hundreds of illegal killings, Human Rights Watch said today. The Colombian Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez Neira should revive the stalled prosecution of the general, Mario Montoya Uribe.

Colombian Attorney General
Néstor Humberto Martínez Neira

Montoya has been under investigation since at least 2015 for “false positive” killings throughout the country when he was the army commander between February 2006 and November 2008, a period during which these killings peaked. The thousands of false positive killings, committed systematically by soldiers throughout the country to boost enemy body counts in the war, began in 2002. In March 2016, Montoya was summoned to a hearing where prosecutors were set to charge him, but he has yet to be charged.

“Montoya led the Colombian army while it engaged in one of worst episodes of mass atrocity in the Western Hemisphere in recent years” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The case against him is a test on how far Attorney General Martínez is willing to go to prosecute those most responsible for these killings.”

Montoya was summoned to a hearing where prosecutors were set to charge him in March 2016, but the Attorney General’s Office cancelled the hearing. In November, lawyers representing victims asked the Attorney General’s Office to set a date for a new hearing, media reports said, but no date has been set and Montoya has not been charged. Later that month, the prosecutor in charge of the case reportedly replied to victims’ lawyers that his office was still reviewing the evidence against Montoya. However, lawyers with detailed knowledge of the case told Human Rights Watch that authorities within the Attorney General’s Office have apparently decided to stall the prosecution.

In October 2016, Human Rights Watch had access to hundreds of pages of transcribed testimony provided by six current and retired army generals to prosecutors in closed hearings carried out between August 2015 and January 2016. The testimony strongly suggests that General Montoya knew, or at the very least had information available to know, about false positive killings under his command, and did not take measures he could have taken to stop them.

General Mario Montoya Uribe

Montoya is one of at least 14 generals currently under investigation for their alleged roles in false positive killings. Others include Luis Roberto Pico Hernández, who commanded one of the seven divisions of the army during Montoya’s time, and Juan Pablo Rodríguez Barragán, the current commander of the Colombian armed forces.

If these guys killed thousands of civilians just to make it look like they were accomplishing something, how easily would they kill the AG if he attempts to convict them of these horrible crimes, especially while one is still in charge of the Armed Forces? At the very least, he has to go. 


Recent agreement with FARC could save Generals

Human Rights Watch is concerned that the prosecution against Montoya and others could be jeopardized because many false positive cases could be tried before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, an ad hoc judicial system created by the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as part of their peace talks.

During the almost three years Montoya commanded the army, extrajudicial killings in Colombia reached unprecedented levels. Prosecutor’s office data shows that at least 2,500 civilians were allegedly killed during that period, most of them by army troops. In 2006 and 2007, for example, more than one in every three reported combat killings could be extrajudicial executions by the army, according to the office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights in Colombia. Montoya resigned in November 2008, right after false positives were unveiled in the “Soacha scandal” – involving army killings of young men and teenage boys from the Bogotá suburb of Soacha.

The testimony Human Rights Watch reviewed strongly suggests that General Montoya failed to take steps to prevent the false positive killings. Gen. Jorge Arturo Salgado Restrepo, who currently commands one of the nine army divisions and is himself under investigation, told prosecutors that General Montoya should have known of false positive killings and did not take reasonable steps to prevent or punish these crimes.

Similarly, Gen. Gustavo Matamoros Camacho, who was Montoya’s chief of operations, told prosecutors that he warned Montoya about irregularities in the reported combat deaths in 2008 that might have indicated illegal killings, but Montoya did not take any action to address them.

The testimony adds to other evidence implicating Montoya that Human Rights Watch and others have already released. In 2009, the army’s inspector-general told the US Embassy that a main factor behind false positives was Montoya’s “constant pressure for combat kills,” and said that he was among the officers who were “involved in” or “tacitly condoned” the crimes, according to an embassy cable. In 2015, a Colombian journalist released an interview of a former soldier and paramilitary who suggested that General Montoya actively furthered false positive killings.

In the June 2015 report, “On their Watch: Evidence of Senior Army Officer’s Responsibility for False Positive Killings in Colombia,” Human Rights Watch presented convincing evidence suggesting that numerous senior officials, including General Montoya, bear criminal responsibility for false positive killings. Evidence against Montoya in the report includes the testimony of one high-ranking army officer who told prosecutors that Montoya knew of the executions when he was the army’s top commander, and the testimony of Lt. Col. González del Río, who said that when Montoya was the army’s top commander, he pressured subordinate commanders to increase body counts, punished them for failing to do so, and was the principal “motivator” for false positives.

“The evidence against Montoya piles up only to gather dust in a drawer somewhere in the Attorney General’s Office,” Vivanco said. “It is about time Colombian authorities move forward with this case.”

Montoya is being investigated for “homicide of protected people,” meaning civilians, which is a crime committed during conflict. Since the Special Jurisdiction for Peace will hear cases of crimes that were “directly or indirectly related” to the armed conflict, it is possible that it would handle his case.

The justice portion of the peace deal dictates that the Special Jurisdiction will rely upon a narrow definition of command responsibility – the rule that establishes when superior officers can be held responsible for crimes committed by their subordinates – that does not conform with international law. The definition could require authorities to prove commanders actually knew about and had control over the actions of their subordinates at the time they committed the crimes.

Such a narrow definition of command responsibility would mean that commanders who were not present at a crime scene to exercise control over their troops’ actions at the time, but had effective control over the troops implicated in abuses and should have known about their actions, could escape accountability, although they bear criminal responsibility for their troops under international humanitarian law.

Under international law, a superior is criminally liable when he knew or should have known that subordinates under his effective control were committing a crime, but failed to take the necessary and reasonable steps to prevent or punish the acts.

“Montoya’s case could end up being a paradigmatic example of how the deliberate ambiguities in the justice agreement could be misused to let senior army generals off the hook and to deny the many victims justice,” Vivanco said.