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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Abducted Colombian governor killed by FARC rebels |
| 2009-12-23 |
| BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- A Colombian governor kidnapped by leftist rebels was killed shortly after he was snatched from his home in a rural southern state, authorities said Tuesday. The acting governor of Caqueta state, Patricia Vega, told local radio that officials had confirmed that Caqueta Gov. Luis Cuéllar had been killed. He was dragged from his home by armed rebels Monday in a nighttime raid. The kidnapping of Cuéllar underscores how the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC -- Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency -- remains capable of high-profile operations despite being battered to its weakest position in decades by President Álvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed military offensive. Armed rebels dressed in military uniforms blasted through the door of Cuéllar's house in a southern city late Monday, killed a police guard and forced the governor into a vehicle, officials said. "We felt a blast and a lot of shots," Cuéllar's wife, Imelda, told local radio. "They dragged him down the stairs like he was an animal." The rural state has traditionally been a FARC stronghold. Authorities said the FARC's Teofilo Forero unit was responsible for the kidnapping, a reminder of the darker days of Colombia's long conflict, when lawmakers and politicians were easy prey for rebel hostage squads. "Every military and police effort must be made to ensure a rescue," Uribe told reporters. "We cannot be held captive by the whim of terrorists -- terrorists who bathe the country in blood and who trick us everyday." The FARC once controlled large parts of Colombia, Latin America's fourth-largest oil producer. But urban bombings and kidnappings eased after Uribe sent troops to take back areas from armed groups funded by cocaine trafficking. Foreign investment soared as cities became safer, kidnappings dropped and soldiers took back rural areas once off-limits to petroleum and mining companies for security reasons. The FARC is still a force in rural areas. But the rebels have increasingly turned to ambushes and the use of land mines as they are driven back deep into the mountains and jungles. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 Um, what are the chances that Chavez sees the FARC as his Viet Cong, and all of his stomping about, fuming about Columbian provocations, are preparing the battlespace for insertion of Venezuelan NVA analogs into Columbia? I mean, he calls his little fascist party "Bolivarian", meaning not the crap-ass Andean country but Simon Bolivar, who certainly thought of all of north-western South America as a single nation, Gran Columbia. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2009-12-23 09:24 |