Colombian Rebels Expand Their Activities

Colombian Rebels Expand Their Activities
By JUAN PABLO TORO, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 58 minutes ago

Speedboats laden with tons of rebel-produced cocaine slip through Caribbean waters to the palm-fringed coasts of Central America, and return to Colombia stuffed with weapons for the guerrillas. Police investigate high-profile kidnappings in Venezuela and Paraguay, and find the fingerprints of Colombian rebels all over them.

From the jungles of Central America to South America's southern cone, Colombia's main rebel group has been expanding its criminal activities, according to law enforcement officials and political leaders across the continent.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, began battling for the rights of peasants in Colombia in 1964. But today, officials say, it looks increasingly like a powerful criminal gang, kidnapping Colombians rich and poor for ransom, carrying out extortion rackets, and supplying the drugs that enable gangs abroad to get rich.

Now, they say, the FARC has gone international, described by President Bush in a recent interview with a Russian newspaper as "a very destabilizing force in South America."

Raul Reyes, a top FARC commander, denied the group is involved in crime abroad, and accused the United States and Colombia of orchestrating a "nefarious international campaign to discredit the FARC."

"The FARC's foreign policies are based on a commitment not to carry out military operations outside Colombia's borders," Reyes e-mailed The Associated Press. "The presence of the FARC in various countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe is of a politico-diplomatic nature."

But political leaders and police say recent cases suggest otherwise:

_ In April, Honduran police intercepted a cache of more than 200 weapons, including machine guns and rocket launchers, which investigators say was to have been delivered to the FARC in exchange for cocaine. The weapons, leftovers from Central America's 1980s civil wars, were bound for the FARC in the jungles of southern Colombia's Caqueta state, they say.

_ Venezuelan authorities captured FARC commander Juan Jose Martinez Vegas on Feb. 18 for allegedly abetting the kidnapping in Venezuela of the mother of Detroit Tigers pitcher Ugueth Urbina.

_ FARC member Rodrigo Granda, arrested in Venezuela in December, was linked to the kidnapping and murder in Asuncion, Paraguay, of Cecilia Cubas, daughter of a former Paraguayan president.

_ Seven FARC rebels recovering from combat wounds were detained by police in Quito, the capital of neighboring Ecuador, in February.

"Today there is greater concern among neighboring countries," said Alfredo Rangel, director of the Security and Democracy Foundation, a Bogota think tank. "There is also stronger cooperation between their police forces, which has led to the discovery of numerous guerrilla networks."

Jorge Noguera, head of Colombia's secret police, said the FARC has been forging ties with criminal organizations, lending its expertise in kidnappings in Latin America and buying weapons in exchange for drugs.

"The FARC has become a multinational crime syndicate," Noguera told the AP.

At home, profits from drug trafficking have made the rebel group an economic powerhouse. Authorities seized nearly $13 million worth of assets, including a small cargo airline, a hotel and a beer distribution company, allegedly belonging the FARC, the Colombian secret police said Tuesday.

The seizures began Monday in Meta state in central Colombia. Authorities are also looking into reports that 10,000 head of cattle in the region were acquired by the rebels using drug money.

The FARC often hires speedboats to smuggle cocaine to the coasts of Central America, where they offload the drugs and take black-market weapons in trade, said Col. Oscar Naranjo, head of Colombia's judicial police. The arms-laden vessels then frequently refuel at the Colombian island of San Andres, 110 miles east of Nicaragua, and proceed to the Gulf of Uraba, the nearest entry point for boats on the Colombian mainland.

El Salvador President Tony Saca said he has ordered an investigation to determine whether weapons from El Salvador's civil war are falling into FARC hands.

In Honduras, authorities accuse a Colombian named Ethalson Mejia of being the middleman in such deals. Mejia, a 25-year-old with curly dark hair, is sought by Interpol for arms trafficking. The capture of FARC rebels in Ecuador and Venezuela also has sparked tensions between the governments of Colombia and those countries.

Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez is urging fellow Central American leaders to take a closer look at rebel activities in their countries.

"There are guerrilla cells of the FARC in several Central American nations ... and this is serious," Alvarez said. "The FARC is trying to infiltrate, to obtain more weapons and even subvert the rule of law."

The FARC is not only outlawed armed group committing crimes in Colombia. The leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN, also is involved in cocaine production, kidnaping and extortion. Right-wing paramilitary groups, created in the 1980s to battle the rebels, also traffic in drugs and have massacred suspected rebel sympathizers. The paramilitaries have also imported arms from black-market dealers abroad.

*** I agree with GiB here ... they all are nothing better than gangs of criminals using politics as an excuse for their activities.

By Lionheart on May 17, 2005, 14:29 in Politics & the war.

tigredelnorte says on May 17, 2005, 17:43:

100.000 AK47's being sold to by Russia to Chavez in Venezuela, any connection?

0 funny, 0 helpful.

juancegomez says on May 17, 2005, 18:32:

Not necessarily a direct one...though the fact that the FARC has put up a little news piece on the matter in one of their sponsored webpages actually implies that they aren't "unhappy" about Chavez's new rifle purchase.

Rifles which will be AK-103s and not AK-101/102s (which would have considerably eased things, since the caliber would different from the guerrilla's and para's AK-47s), because apparently Venezuela couldn't be bothered to simply change the rifle's caliber back to what they had originally wanted years ago, in order to give its neighbor and the U.S. an easier time at practically no cost (in fact, it will actually be *more* expensive for Venezuela to adopt this new caliber, as it makes some of their recently locally produced ammunition worthless).

I'm not blaming only Chavez himself for this latest blunder, at least not at the moment...since I'd wager that definitely more than a few individuals in Venezuela probably pressured/convinced/reassured him to stick to this "wise decision" of changing the weapon's caliber into one that will just P.O. people unnecessarily.

0 funny, 0 helpful.