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Bogota (AFP) – Dissidents of the former FARC guerrilla in Colombia released 16 combatants from another illegal group as “support for the proposal” of “total peace” with which the Government of Gustavo Petro intends to extinguish the conflict, the Ombudsman’s Office reported Wednesday of the Andean country.
The “young people”, who were released last Saturday, had been “detained” by the dissident faction of the extinct FARC known as Second Marquetalia in the midst of “combats” with another of these splinter groups, called the Western Coordinating Command, said this Colombian state body that watches over the defense of human rights.
It was a “complex humanitarian management, which was unprecedented in the country (…) as a gesture of peace and support for the Government’s Total Peace proposal,” the Ombudsman’s Office said in a statement.
The release comes at a time when leftist President Petro intends to negotiate the disarmament and submission to justice of rebels and drug trafficking organizations, respectively.
Although the bulk of the disappeared Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once the most powerful guerrilla in the continent, negotiated peace in 2016 and laid down their arms, dissident factions remained that today are in conflict over control of drug trafficking routes, according to independent studies.
The release of the 16 rebels took place in a rural area of the department of Nariño (southwest), bordering Ecuador, and was mediated by the office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Church Catholic and the Ombudsman.
The FARC dissidents are part of the amalgamation of armed groups with which Petro wants to talk to achieve their disarmament.
The Second Marquetalia, led by former FARC number two Iván Márquez, and the most powerful front known as the Southeastern Bloc or “Central General Staff” have approached the government.
In November, Petro will begin talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last recognized active guerrilla group in Colombia, and hopes to reach an agreement with drug traffickers so that they receive criminal benefits in exchange for dismantling the business.
According to the Ombudsman’s Office, those released were informed about “the possibility” of “voluntarily” availing themselves of the “individual submission program to receive the legal and economic benefits and preferential attention indicated by that route.”
Colombia, the main exporter of cocaine in the world, is experiencing an intense armed conflict that in more than half a century has confronted guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and state agents, leaving more than nine million victims, most of them displaced.
