Colombia….The complete mercenary story —— Part one
By Mohamed saad kamil
After the Spread of Photos of Colombian and Spanish Mercenaries in Sudan, A Deeper Investigation Unveils Their Story
Following the circulation of images showing Colombian and Spanish mercenaries operating in Sudan, I launched an investigation to uncover the details behind their presence. It quickly became evident that the Colombian government is growing increasingly concerned about the phenomenon of mercenaries and is taking steps to limit their involvement worldwide. However, the issue remains highly complex.
To gain further insight, I reached out to a journalist friend from Colombia and asked him about the story behind Colombian mercenaries. His response shed light on the matter
(I don’t know anything about mercenary companies in Colombia. What I do know is that some time ago a group of Colombian mercenaries were involved in the assassination of the Prime Minister of Haiti. They were caught and are now in prison. We also knew that some Colombian mercenaries were captured in Russia for fighting in the Ukrainian war. )
semanta website
Nowadays, in Colombia, some congressmen are trying to introduce a bill that talks about this issue and tries to make the country stop exporting this kind of mercenaries
Uncertainty about the whereabouts of a retired Army corporal in Africa; his documents were found by local authorities
In Sudan, there is an internal war over territorial control of gold mines and it appears that the retired Colombian military would be being led as mercenaries.
Sending retired Colombian soldiers to other countries to carry out dangerous missions as mercenaries seems to be a practice that is increasingly gaining strength. Although there is silence from the national authorities in the face of the issue, more and more voices are heard in the retreats’ guild about what is really happening and that already generates concern.
SEMANA recently revealed the drama being experienced by several families of retired soldiers as a result of the death of their relatives in Sudan, Africa, where the former military allegedly arrived to carry out a simple mission, hired by a security company in Colombia, but unofficial information indicates that they fell into an explosive attack.
A new case that set the alerts was that of retired Corporal Christian Lombana Moncayo Army. His documents were found by the authorities of that country, but it is not reported what happened to the former military.
Local media versions are precarious and shoot on different sides, such as being kidnapped, held by local authorities or killed in the midst of a civil conflict in that country.
Sudan Army, Africa, found the documents of a former Colombian military. Photo: Private Archive
The Colombian military’s documents arrived at The City Paper. This is a TransMilenio card, the card of the circle of non-commissioned officers of the military, the passport, the card and a photo of Lombana Moncayo with his relatives.
According to local information, Sudan is in a kind of internal war, in which Russia and the Arab Emirates would be in conflict with the local army over the control of gold mines; the retired Colombian military would reportedly be taken there under deception to fight the war.
The modus operandi consists, according to sources of retired officers who have spoken to SEMANA, to take the Colombian military after being hired by security companies in Bogotá. There they review their resume and usually prefer ex-military personnel with special forces courses.
Documents of a retired Colombian military officer held by the Army of Sudan, Africa. Photo: Private Archive
For Abel Rojas, a former coordinator of the veterans group of the Ministry of Defence, this situation is worrying, because other countries would be taking advantage of the economic needs of the retired military to hire them as mercenaries to fight wars in other countries.
The military is deceived by companies and entities and also veterans who lead these processes and what they basically do is trick them into taking them to other countries so that they may do things that may be typified in the penal code in some way, Rojas said
President of Colombia
Mercenarism must be prohibited in Colombia. The military should have a better standard of living in Colombia but the owners of the young blood spilled for money in foreign towns should be criminally punished.
I ask the Foreign Ministry to look for ways in Africa for the return of our deceived young people.
I want to give back: there are more than 300 former Colombian soldiers in the Sudan war
According to La Silla Vacía, this is not an isolated case of Colombians seeking fortune. There are about 300 ex-military personnel, two companies, inside Sudan, or in transit there from Libya, to fight with a coup armed group. The Chair spoke directly with two of the ex-military involved and received several audios and
videos from two others in this country.
The video showing the Lombana ballot was recorded by members of a militia allied to Sudan’s military government who are at war with the paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (FAR). In April 2023, FAR launched a coup and since then there has been an internal conflict. The war has caused the largest displacement in the world, with 11 million people leaving their homes since then, more than 61,000 dead and 8.5 million people suffering extreme hunger.
There, in the middle of the desert of the Libyan-Sudan border, the documents of a Colombian appeared on November 20. The passports are all from Colombian mercenaries, Yasin Ahmed, a Sudanese blogger, published.
The testimonies collected by La Silla reveal a transnational operation involving four countries and that today has at least 40 former Colombian military personnel, of the 300, against their will in the war.
“Here is ugly, we are kidnapped,” says a military man in Sudan, through audio. “This is human trafficking, they hire us for one thing and then they take us to another thing,” said another.
“I fear that this could become Haiti 2.0,” one of the sources told La Silla, which asks for his identity to be reserved because he fears being executed if he is known to reveal information. With Haiti, he refers to the murder of former President Young Mose, killed by Colombian mercenaries in 2021, who also claimed to have been tricked into committing this murder.
The situation of the former Colombian military in Sudan
Coming last night from there (Libya) country here (Sudan) we got a hijueputa thing, what a messy pod. If we get out of this I’m going to step aside, you hear in an audio, a former Colombian military officer in Sudan speaks with the broken voice and whose name is not revealed for his safety.
The Chair heard his testimony on November 20 this year. It was recorded on the border between Libya and Sudan after the caravan in which it was going was ambushed on the side of Sudan. They were attacked by the Joint Force of Armed Forces of Darfur, the militia that supports the government and operates in coordination with the Sudanese Army.
This soldier is part of one of the platoons of a company of about 160 former Colombian soldiers who are in Sudan or near its border, operating with the FAR. His convoy came from Benghazi, one of Libya’s main cities, where Colombians arrive. There, they were picked up by the Sudanese of FAR in a caravan of about 15 vans that entered the desert for eight days to reach the border with Sudan, in the southern end of Libya.
The convoy in which this retired military was going was the last that the FAR had taken to Sudan and was repelled with fire by Sudanese militias allied to the government. We got too hard. “There’s one more corporal and others injured,” he says. The wounded corporal is Christian Lombana, from Palestine (Huila), the same to whom the documents found by the Joint Force belong.
)The documents found publicly confirmed the arrival of Colombian mercenaries in Sudan. But the operation began more than three months ago. In September, the first Colombians arrived in this country, in particular the region known as Darfur, west Sudan and the border with Libya and Chad.(
Darfur has been a military, political and economic fort of the FAR even before the start of the war, which began in 2023, following the break-up of the alliance between General Abdelfattah al Burhan’s military government and the FAR, which had allied to give a coup in 2021 to civilian power. Now at war, the coup armed group that Colombians have been reinforced is accused of the most serious crimes, such as blocking UN food aid.
Since then, the population of Darfur has been one of the most affected by the crimes committed in this war, including targeted killings, burning villages by the FAR, forced displacement and a humanitarian situation that has caused civilians to be famine.
The Sudanese Army and its militias have begun a general offensive in the second half. One of the fronts is focused on snatching from the FAR control of the Darfur region where Colombians are. In particular, they have focused on preventing the offensives launched by paramilitaries in the capital of Northern Darfur, El Fasher.
Another retired Colombian military in Sudan, whose testimony was known by La Silla through audios, said his unit was about half an hour from El Fasher and that he was attacked there by Sudanese troops in late October. Three Colombians were killed in that attack and others were injured.
One of the deceased was retired Corporal Diego Edison Hernandez, whose family spoke to Semana magazine and confirmed the death of this Colombian soldier in Sudan. “The information that came to us is that they were in an area, attacked them with a bomb, and exploded where the platoon was, leaving dead and injured,” one of the relatives told Semana on October 30.
Another audio, which circulated in the WhatsApp groups of Colombians involved in this operation, was from a command of Colombians in Sudan, whose name is omitted for security. I’m not gonna tell you lies. The situation is galloping, it’s complicated. If you have things to solve there in Colombia, think about it very well. Here, last night, we already have three sleeping and about five sleep, he says, referring to the three dead and five wounded that left the attack at the end of October.
But for dozens of those involved, this is a task they never enlisted for. They are now fulfilling it as a result of deception and in some cases against their will, according to the four sources whose testimony was known by La Silla Empcía.
The transnational network of mercenaries and deception
The retired military personnel in Sudan and Libya were hired by the Colombian company called International Services Agency A4SI (Academy for Security Instruction). The job offer they were presented was to provide security services to oil infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, a country with which Colombia has an increasingly close relationship.
According to the registration of the company A4SI in the Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá, it was founded in 2017 by Omar Antonio Rodríguez Bedoya, who in his X account presents himself as a former Army officer and has a shared link of A4SI. In his LinkedIn profile he also appears as general manager of this company.
However, according to the testimonies of two soldiers involved in this operation, it is the retired Army colonel, Álvaro Quijano, who resides in Dubai. His name does not appear in the revised minutes in the Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá. Claudia Viviana Oliveros, who is the current legal representative and who identifies the military as Quijano’s sentimental partner, does appear.
Quijano is a man known among the retired military who have worked as security operators, who is the name that mercenary companies give to this type of contract. Many of those who were hired and contacted by A4SI met Quijano years ago while providing security services in the Arab Emirates with another Colombian company.
Quijano is also known because he left the Army in 2007 for alleged links to the North Valley cartel. He was captured for allegedly being one of the links of Juan Carlos Rodríguez, alias “Zeus,” recently shot down by the Army and working with the drug dealer alias Don Diego.
Quijano and Olivares are now pointed out by the military in Sudan and Libya to deceive them to fight a war from others.
“They offered me a contract to take care of oil infrastructure from the Arab Emirates, but it was all a hoax,” says one of the military about the contract he signed. Something that could not be verified by La Silla, as the source claims that they were not given a copy of the contract or let them take photos. The latter coincides with the testimony of another retired military officer who also signed with A4SI.
But other elements also point to the Arab Emirates. On the one hand, several ex-military personnel already had the experience of having worked in that country, which according to a panel of independent experts is violating an international arms embargo to support the FAR.
Is it known that Emirates has had Emirati soldiers in paramilitary-controlled territory. In September, there was an army bombardment at an airport in western Sudan controlled by the paramilitaries. On the same day, the Emirati Ministry of Defense acknowledged that four Emirati men who were fighting abroad had been killed, Marc Español, correspondent for El País de España in Egypt, told La Silla.
For this journalist, who covers the conflict in Sudan, it makes sense to enter the retired Colombian military in southeastern Libya. Emirates throughout the region have tended to establish these alliances with paramilitary or parastatal groups in order to enter and have influence in these scenarios that interest them in economic and political issues, says Spanish.
Colombian ex-military were also made to fill a lifesheet format and sign a confidentiality clause of the company Global Security Services Group. According to the description of its website, this company is the first private security company in the United Arab Emirates to be granted an armed security license.
Thus several batches of retired soldiers came out confidently to Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the first stop of the trip. When we get there begins the rumor that we are going is for Libya. I almost got back there, but as an asshole I stayed. “At the time we didn’t know well what we were going to and many of us had debts to pay,” said a former military man who arrived in Libya.
The appeal for many retired Colombian military personnel is the dollar payment offered for these security contracts. In this case, for example, $2,600 was offered to soldiers and 3,400 to sergeants. For this they opened accounts at North International Bank, a bank based in Antigua and Barbuda, a country classified as “tax haven.” But some report even delays in payments.
According to two sources who gave their testimony to La Silla, from the Arab Emirates they flew to Benghazi, a port city in north Africa, in North Africa. They took us out of the back of the airport so we didn’t pass the regular checks. And then they housed us in shelters they told us had been built by Gaddafi. “As far as I know, they were official facilities of the Libyan authorities,” said one of the military who stayed there.
)Hostel in Benghazi, Libya, where the retired Colombian soldiers stayed for Sudan. Photo: Private Archive.(
One of the retired military told La Silla that when he arrived in Libya it was when he began to hear that the final destination was going to be Sudan and that they were going to enter to support an armed group seeking to overthrow the official power of this country. We’re parakeed, he says, that’s what they said between them. The plan is for three Colombian mercenary battalions to arrive in Sudan: between 1,500 and 1,800 men in arms.
La Silla called and wrote to Claudia Oliveros, retired Colonel Álvaro Quijano and Omar Antonio Rodríguez, but none responded. Nor have they done so to El Tiempo y Semana who published allegations of deception to take retired military personnel to serve as mercenaries to Africa.
I want to give back, but there’s nothing we can do here. The manes they send here are the blacks. I hope nothing happens to us. “I am praying to God to get us out of here,” says one of the sources who feels deceived because he was not hired to fight a civil war.
But the conditions for dating are few. The bodies of the three Colombians killed at the end of October have not been repatriated. The Chair asked the Foreign Ministry about the situation of the bodies and the presence of Colombian mercenaries in Sudan, but the official response was that there was no information on the matter.
On the other hand, a source in Libya with another company, of about 160 other Colombians who have not yet entered Sudan, told La Silla that there are at least 40 military personnel who want to return, but have not left them. In addition, the military also fears reprisals against them. “If you find out that you gave information is the order for one of these sanders to leave one,” said another military man.
