FARC asks forgiveness for killing 79 in 2002 Bojaya massacre

[Disir]

The FARC commander expressed his remorse, adding that “declaring this today does not repair the irreparable, it does not return any of the people who died, nor undoes the suffering caused to so many families, a suffering of which we are aware and hopefully will be forgiven.”

Bojaya representative talks back
The statement was made in the presence of victim representatives from Bojaya, a town that was virtually abandoned after the traumatic event.

Bojaya native Leyner Palacios told the press how the “population was in panic” after the paramilitary incursion and subsequent guerrilla attack.

Palacios confirmed the FARC was responsible for “launching the ‘pipeta’,” but that additional responsibility should be assumed by the paramilitaries “for using the population as a human shield” and the state for “ignoring the alerts and its collusion with the paramilitary forces.”

FARC asks forgiveness for 2002 Bojaya massacre

Now, if they can just hold the ceasefire it might be considered progress.

 

[waltky]

Convicted for kidnapping U.S. gov't. contractors...

FARC member gets 27 years in prison for taking Americans hostage
Nov. 10, 2015 - Diego Alfonso Navarrete Beltran pleaded guilty to hostage-taking in August.

A Colombian man involved in holding three Americans hostage for five years was sentenced to 27 years in prison Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Diego Alfonso Navarrete Beltran, 43, admitted to membership in the Colombian FARC terrorist group but claimed he was only following orders when he was involved in the 2003 capture of Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves, contractors in Colombia on a U.S. Defense Department counter-drug mission.

People line the streets of Bogota, Colombia to protest against the FARC​

The men were abducted by FARC members after their plane crashed; the hostages were marched through the jungle, from one imprisonment site to another, and were denied medical treatment. They were rescued in 2008. Navarrete Beltran was extradited to the United States in 2014 to face charges, and in August pleaded guilty to three counts of hostage-taking. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth imposed the sentence recommended by prosecutors.

The conviction was the third in the case. A FARC commander, Juvenal Ovidio Ricardo Palmera Pineda, also known as Simon Trinidad, was sentenced in 2008 to 60 years in prison, prior to the hostages' release. A lesser FARC leader, Alexander Beltran Herrera, was sentenced to 27 years in 2014.

FARC member gets 27 years in prison for taking Americans hostage

 

[Manonthestreet]

Does that make it all better now.......FARC needs to be exterminated to the last man and woman

 

[waltky]

FARC rebel leader in intensive care after stroke...

Top Colombian rebel leader in intensive care after stroke
Monday 3rd July, 2017 -- The top commander of Colombia's largest rebel movement was hospitalized Sunday following a stroke and remains in intensive care, just days after his group handed over the last of its individual weapons as part of a historic peace deal.

Rodrigo Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, checked himself into a hospital emergency room in the city of Villavicencio shortly after 8 a.m. with slurred speech and numbness in his arm, doctors said in a news conference. They said he remains in intensive care as a precautionary measure but his speech and mobility have already recovered 90 percent from what they described as a temporary blockage of blood to his brain. Doctors said if there are no complications the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia could be released in the next 24 to 48 hours. "Of course he's conscious and making jokes," another rebel leader known by his alias Pastor Alape said at the press conference.

Londono, who is in his 50s, has suffered a number of health scares of late, the result partly of a lifetime in jungle trenches. Recently the FARC confirmed that in 2015 Londono suffered a heart attack during peace negotiations in Cuba, and earlier this year, after the deal was inked, had another unspecified medical setback for which he received treatment on the communist-run island. Alape said initially Londono brushed off the symptoms and had to be convinced by his comrades to undergo medical evaluation. "Thank you to everyone who is concerned about my health," Londono said on Twitter. "Everything is going well. I also thank the medical team for their care."

Londono's hospitalization comes less than a week after Colombia reached a major milestone on its road to peace with the FARC rebels relinquishing some of their last weapons and declaring an end to their half-century insurgency. The historic step was taken by Londono along with President Juan Manuel Santos at a demobilization camp in Colombia's eastern jungles near Villavicencio.

Though hundreds of FARC caches filled with larger weapons and explosives are still being cleared out, the United Nations has certified that all individual firearms and weapons, except for a small number needed to safeguard the soon-to-disband camps, have been collected. The step put Colombia closer to turning a page on Latin America's longest-running conflict, which caused at least 250,000 deaths, left 60,000 people missing and displaced more than 7 million.

Colombian rebel leader Timochenko in intensive care after stroke