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Senior Colombian rebel commander seized in Ecuador
A senior commander of Colombia's Marxist rebel army FARC has been arrested in a hospital in the capital of neighbouring Ecuador, the highest ranked member of the rebel army ever to be captured. Simon Trinidad, a commander of the Marxist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym FARC, was arrested by Colombian and Ecuadorean authorities on Friday while he was being treated in Quito for a flesh-eating insect-borne disease.
| Mmmmm... Sounds painful. I certainly hope it is... |
"It was a joint operation between the Colombian and Ecuadorean authorities, we had been tracking him for months and he arrived at a health centre, apparently sick, and we captured him," a Colombian police commander said. Ecuadorean and Colombian officials said Trinidad, who had an $US820,000 reward on his head, would be flown to the Colombian capital, Bogota, on Saturday. The capture of Trinidad, a former negotiator in failed talks with the government, is a huge boost for the military, which has been criticized for failing to capture or kill senior rebel leaders. President Alvaro Uribe, a close US ally, has boosted military spending and launched an offensive against rebels fighting in the country's four-decade war. While statistics show Colombia has become slightly less violent during his government and the rebels have been pushed back, the armed forces had delivered few major blows against the Marxist insurgency. While the well-spoken 53-year-old Trinidad is not a member of the FARC's seven-strong ruling secretariat, he is the most senior member of Latin America's largest rebel army ever to be captured.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2004-01-03 |
