Colombia - FARC

FARC confirms top leader dead

Sunday 25 May 2008

A Colombian private television channel reported that the FARC rebel forces have confirmed the death of their chief, Manuel Marulanda, due to undetermined causes.

Colombia's leftwing FARC guerrilla army on Sunday confirmed that its founder and longtime chief, Manuel Marulanda, has died, according to television reports.
  
The announcement by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia came a day after the Colombian government said Marulanda had died on the evening of March 26.
  
"The great leader has gone," a member of FARC's secretariat, Timoleon "Timochenco" Jimenez, told Venezuela's Telesur, which was relayed by Colombian television.
  
Marulanda, 80, died after a brief illness and would be succeeded by Alfonso Cano, known as the group's ideological chief, Jimenez said.
  
The death of FARC's leader represented a major setback for the rebels already struggling after suffering defeats on the battlefield at the hands of the US-backed Colombian government forces.
  
Bogota's earlier report of his death had been followed by an announcement by President Alvaro Uribe, who insisted that some FARC leaders were ready to free high-profile hostages such as French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.
  
The elusive Marulanda founded the FARC over four decades ago and has been rumored to be dead at least 17 times.
  
The government statement said that Marulanda's death "would be the hardest blow that this terrorist group has taken, since 'Sureshot' was the one who kept the criminal organization united."
  
Over 40 years, Marulanda turned a group of 48 armed farmers in southern Colombia into a thousands-strong organization which has fought the government and right-wing paramilitaries in a civil war that has claimed more than 200,000 lives.
  
The FARC has become South America's longest-running and largest insurgency. The rebels are believed to hold an estimated 750 people hostage, and traffic drugs to fund their insurgency against the government.
  
Meanwhile, Uribe said he had received "calls from the FARC in which some of the leaders announced their decision to leave the FARC and hand over Ingrid Betancourt if their freedom is guaranteed.
  
"The government's answer is 'yes, they are guaranteed freedom'" if they handed over hostages, Uribe said.
  
In a speech carried live on national television, Uribe said those leaders of the FARC who free the captives could be turned over to authorities from "France, so that they enjoy that freedom there."
  
The president also touted the government's offer to reward rebels up to a total of 100 million dollars when they turn themselves in alongside one or more hostages.
  
Uribe spoke from the town of Florida, in an 800-square-mile (2,050-square-kilometer) zone in the southwest which the FARC has asked to be demilitarized in order to negotiate a swap of high-profile hostages for jailed guerrillas.
  
The FARC have in their control Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate who is both a Colombian and French national, three US nationals and dozens of Colombian police and military staff. They want to swap the hostages for some 500 imprisoned comrades including three in US jails.
  
Betancourt was seized by the FARC in 2002 while campaigning for the presidency, and has been held ever since. Pictures released in November showed her looking frail and the French government has warned that she may be gravely ill.