Bogota, Aug 14 (EFE) Late Colombian right-wing militia chief Carlos Mauricio Garcia had amassed a collection of some 12,000 identity cards belonging to people killed on his orders, one of his erstwhile lieutenants said Thursday.
Garcia kept the documents at a clandestine safe house, Luis Adrian Palacio told prosecutors during a hearing in the northwestern city of Medellin.
Known as “Double Zero”, Garcia was an army veteran who created the Metro Bloc militia, an outfit closely linked to the organisation of Carlos Castano, the now-deceased founder of the AUC militia federation.
The Metro Bloc operated across a large swath of territory around Medellin until it lost a turf war with the rival BCN militia led by drug kingpin Diego Fernando Murillo, alias “Don Berna”.
That conflict was apparently spurred by Garcia’s opposition to the presence of drug traffickers in the AUC, whose 31,000 members ostensibly demobilized three years ago as part of a peace process with President Alvaro Uribe’s government.
Garcia was gunned down in May 2004 in the Caribbean city of Santa Marta, where he had fled to escape Don Berna and his men. His killing came a month after Carlos Castano was assassinated by rivals within the AUC.
Palacio said the documents collected by Garcia belonged to “people murdered and disappeared by Metro Bloc paramilitaries between 1996 and 2003,” according to a summary of his testimony released by the Colombian Attorney General’s Office.
Garcia ordered the documents burned after the Metro Bloc came under attack from Don Berna, Palacio told prosecutors.
He also revealed that Garcia instructed his men to “exhume and incinerate 68 bodies in the municipality of Santo Domingo and more than 50 in San Roque, to avoid their being found by authorities”.
In earlier testimony, Palacio said that Garcia had his men infiltrate army posts to take arms and uniforms for the AUC.
He also implicated former army chief General Mario Montoya, now Colombia’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic, in the provision of weapons to the AUC.
AUC members have killed at least 21,000 people over the past 22 years, according to a report from the Colombian Attorney General’s Office.
The report was compiled by the AG’s office’s Justice and Peace Unit, which is responsible for gathering the statements of the militiamen who demobilized in the 2003-2007 peace process.
