• Alias 'Gallero' was a member of the National ELN Directorate and coordinator of the 'Darío Ramírez Castro' Front of War with influence in the departments of Antioquia, Bolívar and Santander.
• Currently, he was imparting the directives of the Central Command of this Organized Armed Group, through the coordination and planning of terrorist operations.
• The death of alias ‘Gallero’ impacts the GAO ELN's strategic command line.
As part of the decisive military operation against the Organized Armed Group ELN in the south of Bolívar, carried out last Thursday by the Colombian Military Forces, in coordination with the National Police and with the support of the Attorney General's Office, it was determined that among the 5 deaths reported in this military operation there was alias 'Gallero', a member of the ELN National Directorate and delegated by the Central Command to the Darío Ramírez Castro Front of war.
Alias ‘Gallero’ or ‘el Costeño’ had been with the terrorist organization for approximately 33 years. In 1997 he was part of the security of alias ‘Gabino’, a member of the Central Command of this illegal armed organization. In 2004 he served as head of the group Martires de Santa Rosa in southern Bolívar; in 2005, he was captured by the authorities and sent to the San Isidro prison in Popayán, a detention center where he escaped in 2015; and in 2016, he was the main ringleader of the ‘Manuel Vásquez Castaño’ structure of the GAO ELN's South Western Front of war.
As a member of the National Directorate of the ELN, he directed the criminal operations of the Front of war ‘Darío Ramírez Castro’; In the same way, he participated in the planning and approval of terrorist attacks at the national level, such as the one perpetrated in 2019 against the facilities of the Cadet School of the Police 'General Francisco de Paula Santander', where 22 cadets of this school died.
This individual received guidance from alias ‘Antonio García’, second ELN ringleader, in order to issue the Central Command guidelines for the execution of terrorist operations. In addition, he coordinated operations for the recruitment of minors and had an arrest warrant for the crime of kidnapping, issued by the Bucaramanga Prosecutor's Office. In the same way, he had processes for conspiracy to commit a crime, aggravated homicide, rebellion, illegal carrying of firearms and escape of prisoners.
With the death of alias 'Gallero', the coordination of the command structure of the National Directorate of the ELN is hit, weakening its pseudo-political and armed component and thwarting the procurement of resources through illicit activities resulting from drug trafficking and the illegal extraction of mining deposits.
In the same way, the command and control of the Front of war 'Darío Ramírez Castro' of the GAO ELN is directly impacted and its terrorist intentions against civilians, the Security forces and the strategic assets of the Nation in Antioquia, southern Bolívar and Santander, are thwarted.
