 |
LATIN AMERICA |
| |
FARC Guerrilla Wanted by U.S. Captured in
Colombia
BOGOTA – A suspected member of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, guerrilla group wanted by the United
States on terrorism charges has been
arrested, Colombia’s DAS security service
said.
Maribel Gallego Rubio, known as “Maritza,”
was arrested in Bogota, the DAS said,
without providing the date of the arrest.
The guerrilla was captured by intelligence
officers with the support of Interpol
Colombia.
“According to the investigation, alias
‘Maritza’ had contact with the FARC
secretariat and was the logistics
coordinator” for “the acquisition of
cutting-edge technical equipment, such as
satellite telephones, scanners and
computers,” the DAS said.
Gallego Rubio, who allegedly belonged to the
FARC’s 1st Front, is the niece of Nancy
Conde Rubio, the girlfriend of Alexander
Farfan, one of the guerrillas in charge of
holding hostages.
Farfan was arrested during the operation
that freed former presidential candidate
Ingrid Betancourt last year in the southern
province of Guaviare.
Investigators determined that Gallego Rubio
was the go-between in deals involving
equipment suppliers in the United States and
FARC members in Colombia, the DAS said.
Gallego Rubio was also the contact who
provided satellite phones to Gerardo Antonio
Aguilar, another FARC jailer, used to
coordinate movements of hostages.
A federal court in Washington has been
seeking Gallego Rubio’s extradition on
charges that she conspired to provide
material support to a terrorist
organization.
The FARC, Colombia’s oldest and largest
leftist guerrilla group, was founded in
1964, has an estimated 8,000 to 17,000
fighters and operates across a large swath
of this Andean nation.
President Alvaro Uribe’s administration has
made fighting the FARC a top priority and
has obtained billions in U.S. aid for
counterinsurgency operations.
The FARC, whose leader is Alfonso Cano,
suffered a series of blows last year.
On July 2, 2008, the Colombian army rescued
Betancourt, U.S. military contractors Thomas
Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves,
and 11 Colombian police officers and
soldiers.
The FARC had been trying to trade the 15
captives, along with 25 other “exchangeables,”
for hundreds of jailed guerrillas.
The rebels’ most valuable bargaining chip
was Betancourt, a dual Colombian-French
citizen the FARC seized in February 2002
whose plight became a cause celebre in
Europe.
The guerrilla group is believed to still be
holding some 700 hostages.
FARC founder Manuel Marulanda, who was known
as “Sureshot,” died on March 26, 2008.
Three weeks earlier, Colombian forces staged
a cross-border raid into Ecuador, killing
FARC second-in-command Raul Reyes and
setting off a regional diplomatic crisis.
Ivan Rios, a high-level FARC commander, was
killed that same month by one of his own
men, who cut off the guerrilla leader’s hand
and presented it to army troops, along with
identification documents, as proof that the
rebel chief was dead.
A succession of governments have battled
Colombia’s leftist insurgent groups since
the mid-1960s.
The origin of Colombia’s civil strife dates
back to 1948, when the assassination of
popular politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan
sparked a 10-year-long civil war known as
“La Violencia.”
About six years after that conflict ended
with a power-sharing pact between Colombia’s
two main parties, a government offensive
against peasant self-defense groups led
Marulanda, who was pursued by death squads
during La Violencia, to form the FARC.
In 1999, then-President Andres Pastrana
allowed the creation of a Switzerland-sized
“neutral” zone in the jungles of southern
Colombia for peace talks with the FARC.
After several years of fitful and ultimately
fruitless negotiations, Pastrana ordered the
armed forces to retake the region in early
2002. But while the arrangement lasted, the
FARC enjoyed free rein within the zone.
The FARC is on both the U.S. and EU lists of
terrorist groups. Drug trafficking,
extortion and kidnapping-for-ransom are the
FARC’s main means of financing its
operations.
|
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
