COLOMBIA: PRESIDENT URIBE WELCOMES INDICTMENTS FOR COLOMBIAN REBEL LEADERS BY U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT

Record ID: 640765

  • Title: COLOMBIA: PRESIDENT URIBE WELCOMES INDICTMENTS FOR COLOMBIAN REBEL LEADERS BY U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT
  • Date: 13th November 2002
  • Summary: (W1) SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS, COLOMBIA (FILE) (REUTERS) SV: REVOLUTIONARY ARMED FORCES OF COLOMBIA (FARC) MILITARY COMMANDER JORGE BRICENO SUAREZ "MONO JOJOY" SCU: SOLDIER HELD HOSTAGE BY FARC SV: "MONO JOJOY" SPEAKING TO KIDNAPPED SOLDIERS
  • Embargoed: 28th November 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SANTA MARTA; META; AND SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS, COLOMBIA
  • Country: Colombia
  • Topics: Conflict,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAYPEU3785ZK44PT8WIX0N528W
  • Story Text: U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced and Colombia has welcomed the indictments of Colombian rebel leaders on charges of kidnapping and drug trafficking to finance their war on the government.
    The indictments were handed up in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. Two were unsealed on Wednesday (November 13).
    Ashcroft said Jorge Briceno Suarez -- the top military commander of the FARC, Latin America's largest guerrilla army -- was charged in two different indictments.
    In the first, Briceno was added to a list of six others, including Tomas Molina Caracas, who were first charged in March with conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States.
    The indictment alleged Briceno controlled major drug transactions, arbitrated a drugs-for-weapons deal and received large sums of money in exchange for cocaine from Molina.
    In the second indictment, Briceno, Molina -- commander of the FARC's 16th Front -- and a man known as "El Loco" (Madman) were charged with conspiring in 1997 to kidnap two Americans and kill two Colombians. They could face the death penalty.
    The Americans, Jerel Shaffer and Earl Goen, were working in Venezuela. The rebels are accused of murdering two Colombians while transporting Shaffer to the Colombian jungle where he was held for nine months until a $1 million ransom was paid.
    A third indictment, which was also unsealed on Wednesday, charges senior FARC commander Henry Castellanos Garzon, known as "Romana," with hostage taking for the March 1998 kidnapping of four American bird-watchers. They were held for a month.
    Briceno, Molina and Castellanos all live and operate in Colombia.
    The FARC, which has been fighting the government for 38 years, says it is a peasant army that wants socialist reform in a country with huge differences between rich and poor.
    In September, the United States also indicted the FARC's most bitter foe, the far-right paramilitary warlord Carlos Castano, on drug trafficking charges.
    Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a keen proponent of the massive U.S. support for his fight against drugs and outlaw gunmen from the left and the right, welcomed the indictments.
    "When the conduct of an individual breaks the law, he should be sanctioned with what is prescribed by the same law,"
    said Uribe in the Caribbean port of Santa Marta, where he was meeting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
    "What is happening now is reaffirming a situation that is known by Colombians and that is known by the international community. Those decisions are welcomed for the good of Colombia," said Commander Of Colombia's Armed Forces, General Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel.
    Calling the indictments essential to assuring the survival of democracy and the rule of law in Colombia, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration director Asa Hutchinson said the United States was determined to arrest the men.
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