The Colombian government will pay $2.5m to a Farc rebel who killed his boss last week, Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos has said. Pedro Pablo Montoya, known as Rojas, killed Ivan Rios, a member of the group's ruling body, cut off his hand as proof and then turned himself in.The government has made paying rewards to informants a key part of its fight against the left-wing rebels. But critics say the policy amounts to government approval for murder.
| Yup, pretty much. Nothing that there's anything wrong with enticing one murderous thug to kill another. |
The defence minister said there had been opposition from some within the government to rewarding a self-confessed murderer. But he added that the payment system was helping the Colombian government in its fight against the rebels and should be honoured without exception.
Montoya, described by the BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Colombia as a guerrilla with a long and bloody history in the Farc rebel army, shot his boss Rios with a single bullet to the head, and then killed Rios's girlfriend. He then cut off Rios's right hand to take to the security forces to prove he had killed the rebel leader, a member of Farc's seven-man secretariat.
Montoya has said his reward will encourage other rebels to kill their commanders and desert.