the head of The colombian Army, general Nicacio Martinez, has been relieved of his position after starring in a year full of controversy. The president Ivan Duke announced yesterday the change in an unexpected press conference at the Casa de Nariño, where he was surrounded by the military leadership. “We had a deep conversation where we recognized his great service to the country and we have taken the decision to leave the Army headquarters. He has expressed to family reasons, which I have received with sentiments of gratitude,” said the president in announcing the replacement of Martinez, general Edward Zapateiro.
The general Martinez comes out at the end of a week in which were killed six people, including two environmental and social leaders in different regions of Colombia and in the midst of a critical security situation in the country. His tenure lasted exactly one year and was marked by a storm, standing. His name remained in the headlines of the media and in the debates in the colombian congress for a controversial policy that required duplicate results and for his participation as second in command of a brigade appointed by the killing of civilians between October 2004 and January 2006.
In may, the Army command ordered its troops to double the amount of casualties and captures in the fighting. The directive was strongly criticized even by high-ranking officers, who saw in the initiative a return to a period where they multiplied the scandals of the false positives, the extrajudicial executions of civilians who were presented as combat casualty.
The controversy forced Martinez to withdraw the directive and also denied his involvement in the case of the false positives that occurred 15 years ago, a fact revealed by THE COUNTRY last June. The general said then that his role in the brigade is reduced to administrative tasks. At that time he was second commander and chief of staff of that group. The Prosecution considers that 23 of 283 alleged extrajudicial executions that occurred in the departments of La Guajira and Cesar go back to that stage. Despite these criticisms, the president Duke kept him in office and the Senate promoted him to general of four suns right in the middle of the controversy
criticism of The Army had intensified when it became known of murder at the hands of soldiers of Dimar Torres, a former combatant of the FARC. The magazine Semana showed that it was a homicide. This fact revived again the ghost of extrajudicial executions. The Prosecution estimated that the armed forces perpetrated at least 2.248 murders between 1998 and 2014.
The military leadership was once again in the crosshairs of public opinion when it was made public the bombing of disagreement of the FARC in November, and which killed seven children between the ages of 12 and 17 years. Senator Roy Barreras, the party of former president Juan Manuel Santos, reported that the then Defense minister, Guillermo Botero, tried to hide these deaths to the country. Days after the fact, Botero resigned from office. Barriers also denounced as a false positive in the case of the Flower Horn, which is now investigating the Prosecutor’s office. “I showed that he died shot in the back when he tried to take refuge in the home of his grandmother,” said Gates.
the output of The general Martínez is also in the midst of a crisis of popularity of the administration that Ivan Duke, who is around 70 percent disapproving and the announcements of changes in his cabinet. In replacement of Nicacio Martinez arrives at the general Edward Zapateiro, who has been director of the School of Army Cadets, the School’s José María Córdova; commander of the Colombian Battalion in the Sinai and the Joint Special Operations Command.
