(Bogota) Colombian police assured Tuesday that a dissident FARC guerrilla leader, whose death the press reported this weekend in clashes in neighboring Venezuela, was probably no longer alive.
The press, which quoted sources from the Colombian and Venezuelan intelligence services, had indicated that “El Paisa”, whose real name was Hernan Dario Velasquez, one of the main dissident commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, Marxists) , was shot dead in the Venezuelan state of Apure, bordering Colombia, in fighting involving a rival rebel faction.
” According to our information […] there is a very, very, very high chance that he is dead, ”Colombian police chief General Jorge Vargas told reporters.
“Sources in Arauca (a Colombian department next to Venezuela) gave us very clear information,” he said. It would be the “consequence of criminal disputes within the organization of the camp area in Venezuela. […] more or less 100 km from the border ”.
“El Paisa”, wanted by Interpol and whose head was priced at nearly 700,000 euros by the Colombian government, was one of the main commanders of “Segunda Marquetalia”, one of the main factions of the FARC dissent. directed by Ivan Marquez.
“He was killed along with a person known as Lulo, that’s what we know so far,” said the police chief.
The Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro has not commented on this information. The Colombian government regularly accuses Venezuela of protecting these dissident rebels, which Caracas has always denied.
A feared commander during his years at the head of the elite force of the FARC, “El Paisa” moved away in 2018 after the peace agreement of 2016 which had disarmed the most powerful guerrillas in Latin America and whose he was, however, one of the negotiators.
He reappeared in 2019, in camouflage uniform, alongside Ivan Marquez, the ex-number two of the FARC, and Jesus Santrich, another influential guerrilla, to announce his return to arms.
Hernan Dario Velasquez became famous for his armed actions, including the car bomb attack that killed 36 and injured dozens in February 2003 in Bogota, against an upscale club in the city.
Command beheaded?
On Tuesday, the Colombian press also reported the death of another leader of the same faction of the Segunda Marquetalia, Henry Castellanos Garzon, alias “Romana”, killed according to it during the same incident on Sunday.
“We are in the process of checking”, commented on this subject the chief of the police force.
During the war, “Romana” was particularly known for her involvement in the numerous kidnappings and kidnappings for ransom carried out by the FARC.
The director of the independent think tank Indepaz believes that the deaths of “El Paisa” and “Romana” “would be a terrible and irreparable blow” for an organization “which has very few middle commanders and which is only in the process of s. ‘establish in the territories’.
“They are the two most important leaders from an operational and military point of view of this group” of some 2,000 men, Camilo Gonzalez told AFP.
Even without official confirmation, President Duque celebrated the supposed fall of the two former guerrillas: “the fact that these bandits are out of harm’s way is good news and shows that the bandits have no place to go. hide, ”he told reporters on Tuesday.