NICARAGUA: Nicaragua reiterates fear for security of survivors of attack on FARC camp

Record ID: 352469

  • Title: NICARAGUA: Nicaragua reiterates fear for security of survivors of attack on FARC camp
  • Date: 21st June 2008
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) NICARAGUAN PRESIDENT, DANIEL ORTEGA, SAYING: "They were bombed in a crime known as state terrorism. When a state, by its own decision, comes along and crosses a border and attacks the other side, that country is committing state terrorism." WOMEN APPLAUDING ORTEGA
  • Embargoed: 6th July 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nicaragua
  • Country: Nicaragua
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAETWZ2ZHBTPYSNJXU7Y9ZDBVHZ
  • Story Text: Two FARC rebels and Mexican national who survived Colombian attack on rebel camp in Ecuador participate in Sandinista event in Nicaragua.
    Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on Thursday (June 19) that Colombia threatens the security of three women who were given asylum in Managua after they survived a Colombian army attack on a clandestine FARC rebel camp in Ecuador last March.
    Ortega gave asylum in May to Colombian women Doris Torres Bohorquez and Martha Perez Gutierrez and also for Mexican Lucia Morett, who was injured in the attack that also killed guerrilla leader Raul Reyes.
    Ortega said that Colombia had committed a state crime.

    "They were bombed in a crime known as state terrorism. When a state, by its own decision, comes along and crosses a border and attacks the other side, that country is committing state terrorism."
    Torres said that they were being persecuted by Colombia.

    "Because we were victims of state terrorism, we are persecuted by the Colombian state and so we asked for political asylum here in Nicaragua and it was given to us and so we thank the Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and the whole of the Nicaraguan people."
    According to Perez, Uribe had violated the sovereignty of Ecuador.

    "On March 1 the government of President Uribe Velez massacred our sovereignty, massacred our brother, the Ecuadoraen people because the massacre didn't even take place on Colombian soil, but on Ecudorean soil. He violated the sovereignty of Ecuador and massacred dozens of guerilla rebels and killed off the injured. On that day were all asleep and were awoken by bombs."
    Ortega said that the three women could be "witnesses of charges" in an eventual international trial against Colombian President Alvaro Uribe because of the attack on the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) camp and that Nicaragua had to protect them.

    "Wherever we go, we'll denounce him, but our lives are at risk.
    Uribe is scared should we talk because we can be witnesses of charges in a trial that will be opened against him because one day he will sit in the bench of the accused for everything that he did and for the massacre of March 1, he will have to answer and we are the ones who could give testimony and that is why it doesn't suit Uribe for us to be alive, he would prefer us to be dead," said Morett.
    The relations between Ecuador and Colombia broke after the attack and have still not been reestablished.
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