Tolima. In the frame of the Victoria Plan and complying with the constitutional mandate, units of the 16th Infantry Battalion "Patriotas", a unit assigned to the Sixth Brigade, in coordination with the Colombian Air Force, Cortolima and Prosecutor's Office, two men were captured in an operation against illegal mining carried out in rural area of the municipality of Honda, in the department of Tolima.
During the operations, units of this military unit also found a backhoe, used to extract approximately 48 cubic meters of material per day, causing serious environmental damage in the area. With the extracted material, illegal groups produced more than 15 million pesos. The extraction works would be carried out from Monday to Saturday uninterruptedly.
In this operation two individuals were captured, one of them was the operator of the backhoe, who were later put into custody of the Prosecutor's Office 32 of Honda for the crime of illegal exploitation of mining deposits and others.
This week 15 people have been captured for this crime thanks to the effectiveness of the men of the Sixth Brigade and their units attached to towns such as Chaparral, Coyaima and Honda. Operations will continue in order to counteract these phenomena and prevent the continuous damages to the environmental ecosystems.
Source: Sixth Brigade - National Army.
