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Italian communists had ties to FARC

The Associated Press
Sunday, August 31, 2008

ROME: An Italian Communist party helped the Colombian leftist rebels known as FARC, including by raising funds, a Rome daily reported Sunday, saying the support was revealed by e-mails found on a slain rebel's laptop.

The support from the Communist Refoundation party spanned several years, including time that the small party served in former Premier Romano Prodi's center-left government, said La Repubblica daily, citing information found in computers belonging to FARC commander Raul Reyes, who was killed in March in a Colombian military raid.

Parliamentary elections this spring swept Refoundation and another tiny Communist party out of the legislature, when both failed to win the minimum percentage of votes needed for seats.

A leader of one of the parties in Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government said he would seek an inquiry into the allegations. Maurizio Gasparri called La Repubblica's report "profoundly disturbing" because FARC is involved in cocaine trafficking, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

La Repubblica, a left-leaning daily said the support included paying the medical bills for a FARC European representative in a Swiss clinic a few years ago.

The report appeared a day before a scheduled private meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and Ingrid Betancourt, who was freed earlier this year by the Colombia military after six years as a hostage of the rebels.

An official of Communist Refoundation, Ramon Mantovani, said in an interview on Italian state TV that his party's "political objective" in being in contact with FARC was to "rebuild a peace process in Colombia."

"As it is evidenced by what they say about our conversations with the FARC, we took the position that the FARC should liberate Betancourt," Mantovani said. In the interview, he did not mention the fundraising allegation.

No one answered the telephone at his party's headquarters Sunday.

Colombian government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

La Repubblica wrote that a Colombian government dossier accuses the Italian Communists of having had relations with FARC beyond "simple contacts," and included fundraising.

In July, using information found in Reyes' computers, Spain arrested a Spanish woman suspected of being a liaison between FARC leadership and members of the group in Europe.

By tasco66 on Sep 2, 2008, 04:54 in Politics & the war.

tasco66 says on Sep 2, 2008, 04:55:

Europeans must stop funding terrorist groups

Maybe the US should invade these terrorist funding nations...

Not being bound to swear to the dogmas of any master

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kalder says on Sep 2, 2008, 06:15:

Italian Communists are hellbent on destroying their own nation's culture, so I'm not surprised they want to ruin other peoples' as well.

"kalder- have you ever had a woman?"--Sam Salmon

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kalder says on Sep 2, 2008, 06:24:

Terrorism does get a worringly free pass with a lot of people in Europe and the UK. We've plenty of fatuous middle-class liberals over here who carry placards claimimg "We're All Hezbollah Now" and think that somehow an alliance of Baathist fascists and Islamist nutcases who bomb schools, buses and markets are a principled 'resistance'.

But don't confuse those snooty, well-heeled liberal-leftists with the ordinary working people Tasco. Most people this side of the pond don't have a love affair with murder and terrorism.

"kalder- have you ever had a woman?"--Sam Salmon

0 funny, 1 helpful.

lampltr says on Sep 2, 2008, 16:23:

Kalder, This has been like this for quite a long time and is a socialist state anyways, so why you say Italian communists are hellbent on destroying their own nation's culture? Democratic or Socialistic what is the difference....

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rocinante says on Sep 2, 2008, 20:45:

Yes liberlist terrorists - lets not split hairs.

"World economic indicators point to a democrat winning 2008. It will surely be Obama. Not that the US president actually runs the US." Feb 5, 2008

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lampltr says on Sep 3, 2008, 16:38:

rocinante you are right hehe

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