The most senior member of Colombia's FARC rebel army ever captured was sentenced to 35 years in jail on Tuesday for kidnapping, his lawyer said.
Ricardo Palmera, a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, known by his alias "Simon Trinidad," received the jail term for kidnapping a former mayor of the city of Valledupar, his lawyer Oscar Silva told reporters.
Palmera faces dozens of other criminal charges and admits to being a rebel, for which he has already been sentenced to 81 months in jail, but denies having been an important commander or planning kidnappings.
The 17,000-strong FARC is fighting a four-decade-old war for Marxist revolution. The conflict claims thousands of lives a year.
The army blamed the rebels for detonating a car bomb in the eastern Colombian town of Tame on Tuesday, killing an 8-year-old boy and injuring 18 other people.
Palmera was captured in Quito, Ecuador, in January and sent to Colombia, where he is being held in the Combita high-security jail.
Palmera's lawyer said he could not provide additional details about his client's sentence. Colombian media said the sentence was for the kidnapping of former Valledupar Mayor Elias Ochoa and his brother in the 1990s.
Authorities say Palmera is the most senior FARC commander apprehended. His arrest was a big victory for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who has cracked down on the rebels.
Palmera was once a member of Valledupar society but ran off to join the FARC in the mid-1980s. Officials say he used knowledge gleaned from his past as a bank manager to identify victims for kidnapping by the FARC, which relies on ransoms for much of its funding.
He was a rebel negotiator during peace talks with the government, which collapsed in 2002, and enjoyed talking about his youthful friendship with former President Andres Pastrana.
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