A senior commander of Colombia's Marxist rebel FARC was arrested in neighboring Ecuador. He is the highest-ranked member of the guerrilla group to be captured in four decades of war with the government.
Simon Trinidad, a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym FARC, was arrested by Colombian and Ecuadorean authorities late on Friday while he was being treated in the capital Quito for a flesh-eating insect-borne disease, Colombian police said.
But Ecuadorean police gave a different account of the arrest, saying Trinidad was captured in a Quito street during an immigration check and was not carrying documents.
PHOTO: AP
The capture of Trinidad, a former negotiator in failed talks with the government, is a huge boost for the US-backed military, which has been criticized for failing to capture senior rebels leaders in a war that claims the lives of thousands of people every year.
Arriving in Bogota's military airport on Saturday escorted by heavily-armed soldiers, a defiant Trinidad raised his handcuffed left fist and screamed "Long Live the FARC!"
Trinidad, who had a reward of US$820,000 on his head, faces 30 criminal counts, including murder, terrorism, rebellion and kidnapping, officials said. He will be held in a secret location for security reasons.
President Alvaro Uribe, a close US ally who has stepped up military spending and launched an offensive against rebels, pledged to push forward until "terror is totally dismantled."
"This proves terror will never rule," Uribe, who has often criticized army generals in public for failing to produce more results in the battlefield, said in a speech to the nation.
There were conflicting reports about the arrest. The Colombian military first said the capture took place on the border with Ecuador. The Colombian police later said Trinidad had been followed for months and that he was seized in a hospital, where he was receiving treatment for leishmaniasis, a flesh-eating disease spread by the sand fly in the jungle.
Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe, not related to the president, added to the confusion by saying the US provided "key support" in the capture.
"This is the result of an exemplary action by our security forces, the police and the army in this case, and with the key support of the Ecuadorean government and police, and the United States government," the defense minister told reporters.
He did not elaborate, but Colom-bia's armed forces have received millions of dollars in military aid and intelligence from Washington in recent years.
Trinidad's arrest comes on the heels of recent army killings of mid-level FARC commanders. While the well-spoken, balding Trinidad, 53, is not a member of the FARC's seven-member ruling secretariat, he is the most senior member of Latin America's largest rebel army ever to be captured.
The FARC, which says it is fighting for socialist reforms, has been on a tactical retreat since Uribe took office in 2002, pushed back into jungle and mountains.
Trinidad, whose real name is Ricardo Palmera, said in 2002 that he became a guerrilla in 1987 because of his outrage at the enormous gaps in income in Colombia.
The FARC, created in 1964 by landless peasants, is led by Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda.
Sureshot and the remaining six members of the FARC's top directorate are at large.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited