Uno menos. La FARC will go down like ETA

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE

4 November 2011 Last updated at 23:26 ET


Top Farc rebel leader Alfonso Cano 'killed' in Colombia

Alfonso Cano. File photo Alfonso Cano had a $4m prize tag on his head


The top commander of Colombia's left-wing Farc rebel group has been killed, official sources say.

Unnamed defence ministry officials told media that Alfonso Cano had been killed in an army operation in the mountains in the south-west of the country.

Colombia had offered a reward of nearly $4m (£2.5m) for information leading to his capture.

Security forces have killed a number of Farc commanders and arrested many others over the past year.

The Marxist-inspired Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) has been further weakened by a military offensive which began 10 years ago.

However the group - the oldest and largest among Colombia's left-wing rebels - retains the ability to mount hit-and-run attacks, partly owing to cash raised through its involvement in the illegal drugs trade and partly thanks to the country's thick jungles.

The Farc is on US and European lists of terrorist organisations.

Colombia's civil conflict has lasted more than four decades, drawing in left-wing rebels and right-wing paramilitaries.

Leader Is Dead, but Danger Still Seen in Colombian Rebels
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: November 5, 2011



RIO DE JANEIRO — The Friday bombing raid by Colombian security forces that killed the top commander of the country’s largest guerrilla group dealt what may be the most severe blow yet to the resilient insurgency. But Colombian security experts cautioned that the four-decade-old rebel group could still have the capacity to fight back and regroup.
Luis Acosta/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Alfonso Cano, in 2001.
Related

Leader of FARC Guerrilla Movement Is Killed in Combat, Colombian Officials Say (November 5, 2011)


Elite Colombian forces had been hunting Alfonso Cano, 63, for three years since he had ascended to the top of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, following the death in 2008 from a heart attack of Manuel Marulanda, the guerrillas’ legendary leader. Earlier that same year, Colombian forces killed FARC’s second-in-command, Raúl Reyes, in a raid carried out on Ecuadorean soil.

The setbacks suffered by FARC, which also included the killing last year of their field marshal known as Mono Jojoy, form part of a broad weakening of the rebel group during the past decade, with hundreds of its combatants deserting in recent years and its ranks thinning considerably from a peak of an estimated 17,000.

The military operation by some 1,000 soldiers that killed Mr. Cano, a hard-liner who joined FARC after dabbling in university politics in Bogotá, the capital, was code-named “Odyssey,” a word that could also describe Colombia’s long, meandering struggle against FARC, a Marxist-inspired group which has financed itself from the cocaine trade and abductions.

The killing of Mr. Cano in Cauca, a region in southwest Colombia, allowed some in the country to ponder whether FARC was finally being marginalized as a security threat. “No one else can keep the group together like he did,” said Marta Lucia Ramírez, a former Colombian defense minister, speaking of Mr. Cano.

“They’ve stopped being a threat for Colombian democracy,” said Ms. Ramírez, “but they continue being a threat to the citizenry.”

FARC still has the capacity to carry out deadly attacks on Colombia’s security forces. In the space of a few days last month, one attack attributed to the group killed 10 soldiers in the southern province, of Nariño and killed 10 more soldiers in Arauca, near the border with Venezuela.

Mr. Cano, a bespectacled, bearded former anthropologist, had adopted his nom de guerre after joining FARC. He grew up in Bogotá’s middle class; his real name was Guillermo Saenz. With his bookish appearance, Mr. Cano differed from others with rougher origins in FARC’s high command.

Juan Carlos Pinzón, Colombia’s defense minister, said Mr. Cano was clean-shaven when he was killed in a firefight after fleeing a bombing raid. He said the operation killed four other guerrillas, while five others were captured, which would be a surprisingly small amount of men accompanying FARC’s top commander.

“His wallet, glasses and weapons were recovered,” Mr. Pinzón told journalists in Bogotá. Mr. Cano’s body was taken to the city of Popayán, and a photograph was distributed to Colombian media. He declined to comment on whether the United States, the top provider of military aid to Colombia, had assisted in the operation.

Ariel Ávila, a conflict analyst with the Colombian think tank Arco Iris, said that Mr. Cano’s killing dealt a political blow to FARC, since he symbolized the group’s small amount of support in urban areas, as well as a military blow, since Mr. Cano had overseen a more aggressive strategy of holding ground against advances by Colombia’s army.

“The military forces can take a deep breath” Mr. Ávila said Saturday from Bogotá. “But this isn’t the end of the guerrillas; they still have some time left.”

Indeed, despite the killings of prominent FARC leaders, Colombia’s war against that and other armed groups has entered a complicated new phase. Advances against FARC and the National Liberation Army, or E.L.N., a smaller guerrilla group, have squeezed the insurgents into border areas with Venezuela and Ecuador.

Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, has improved relations with both countries, and Venezuela and Ecuador seem to be cooperating more with the capture of some midlevel guerrillas. But once the rebels cross Colombia’s borders and onto neighboring soil, they still face much less pressure from well-trained Colombian forces which have pursued them for years.

Two FARC commanders who have operated along Colombia’s border with Venezuela, Iván Márquez and José Benito Cabrera (who uses the alias Timochenko), are thought to be contenders to take Mr. Cano’s place. But analysts of Colombia’s war against FARC say Mr. Cano’s successor will face challenges in maintaining unity among the group’s various factions.

FARC’s weakening has also raised the possibility that a new top commander might engage in talks with Colombia’s government to seek an end to the long guerrilla war. Of the options left to FARC, Gustavo Petro, the newly elected mayor of Bogotá and himself a former guerrilla with the M-19 group, said, “Dialogue is the only way.”

Jenny Carolina González contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia.

El Ejército colombiano abatió a Cano tras siete horas de persecución por la selva
Tras siete horas de persecución en escarpadas montañas, el Ejército colombiano dio muerte al número uno de la guerrilla

El Ejército colombiano estrecha el cerco sobre el jefe de las FARC
Las FARC liberan a otros dos rehenes

Armando Neira Bogotá 5 NOV 2011 - 15:23 CET
Archivado en:


El cadáver del líder de las FARC, Alfonso Cano, abatido en la madrugada del sábado por el Ejército colombiano. / STR (AFP)
7


La zona geográfica en la que ha sido abatido Alfonso Cano, el número uno de las FARC, es de una belleza imponente, pero también el escenario más inhumano para pelear. Se trata de un macizo montañoso en el sur de Colombia de verdes intensos, humedad permanente y temperaturas que en ocasiones pueden caer hasta los cinco grados bajo cero. Por eso, tras herirlo en un bombardeo, los militares tardaron siete largas horas para tenerlo en la mira y concluir su misión.

“Es un día muy importante para Colombia”, exclamó el presidente Juan Manuel Santos al dar el parte de victoria después de la medianoche. “Es el golpe más contundente dado a las FARC en toda su historia”. En efecto, Cano era la pieza fundamental de este grupo que llegó a poner contra la pared al Estado, pero que ahora encadena derrotas tras derrotas.

De 63 años de edad, Cano no se dio nunca por vencido como lo ratificó en su día final ante sus adversarios. Con base en unas pacientes y exitosas tareas de inteligencia, éstos localizaron su campamento en la espesura de la vegetación. “Lo tenemos”, informó uno de los pilotos a su comandante que de inmediato pidió autorización a Bogotá para bombardear.

La operación se inició hace tres años y en ella participaron 7.000 militares

Cano sintió la envergadura del ataque pero mantuvo la frialdad para ordenar la retirada. Estaba muy cambiado pues se había quitado su espesa barba que lo identificó en sus 33 años de vida armada. Un comando de fuerzas especiales logró alcanzar a miembros de su guardia pretoriana que sabían que tenían que dar la vida antes de permitir su muerte o captura.

El grupo era reducido, pues aunque en la operación iniciada hace un poco más de tres años participaban casi 7.000 militares, cualquier movimiento debía hacerse con el sigilo de un lince. El frío y las minas antipersona que las FARC siembran en puntos estratégicos, no solo le han cerrado el camino a los militares, sino que les ha causado numeras bajas. De hecho, este sábado trascendió que en esta búsqueda tres jóvenes soldados murieron de hipotermia y dos más al caer a un precipicio.

La zona de la capura es inhóspìta,
tres jóvenes soldados murieron
de hipotermia y dos más al caer
a un precipicio

Por eso desde hace cinco meses, cuando había información certera de la ruta que llevaba, había que extremar las precauciones. En esa fecha se llegó a uno de sus campamentos. Diez minutos antes de que llegaran las tropas al lugar, Cano había estado allí. Esto llevó al presidente Santos a informar que le estaban “pisando los talones”.

Consciente de sus dificultades, Cano se mimetizó en un área selvática a esperar el agotamiento de los militares. Estos, sin embargo, no dieron su brazo a torcer y trazaron un círculo en un área de varios municipios que le impediría salir a los departamentos de Cauca y Huila, en el suroccidente colombiano, una zona donde las FARC se mueven como pez en el agua por la experiencia acumulada de varias décadas de lucha.

El parte de la victoria lo dio el presidente Santos en persona en televisión

El viernes las fuentes de inteligencia procedieron a informar su localización exacta. Vino un bombardeo en el que se capturó al guerrillero ‘Indio Efraín’. Aunque el año pasado ya habían dado muerte a por lo menos cuatro de sus hombres más cercanos, las tropas entendieron que ahora sí estaban realmente cerca porque este era uno de los hombres de más confianza, al punto que lo había nombrado jefe de su seguridad personal.

Tras el cruce de disparos, se envió más tropa y al ingresar a lo que había sido un improvisado campamento se encontró el cuerpo de El Zorro, encargado de comunicaciones desde hace 14 años en las FARC. Para una guerrilla que sufre el más implacable acoso, se puede perder cualquier unidad pero no el radista, porque este es quien sirve de vaso comunicante con el resto de militantes. Sin él, Cano estaba condenado a extraviarse sin saber para dónde tomar. En medio de la inspección las tropas encontraron una billetera personal de Cano, siete computadores, 39 memorias USB, 24 discos duros, dos ametralladoras y 194 millones de pesos en moneda nacional, dólares y euros.

Es el golpe más contundente dado a las FARC en toda su historia”

Juan Manuel Santos

La satisfacción entre los militares fue grande porque en el pasado el decomiso de los ordenadores de Raúl Reyes –muerto en un bombardeo en Ecuador (1 de marzo de 2008) y Jorge Briceño alias Mono Jojoy –también caído en otro bombardeo en las selvas del oriente colombiano (22 de septiembre de 2010), permitió penetrar en el cerebro de las FARC, lo que las debilitaría aún más.

Sin embargo el mayor tesoro, aunque de gran valor estratégico, no eran en ese momento los ordenadores, sino algo más simple y preciado para Cano en una fuga donde la neblina dificulta la visibilidad: sus gafas.

El día pasó con gran tensión en tres escenarios distintos. En el escarpado terreno del municipio caucano de Suárez donde Cano, el marxista puro a quien el presidente Álvaro Uribe definió como el “filósofo del terrorismo”, huía; en Bogotá, donde el joven ministro de Defensa, Juan Carlos Pinzón (39 años), acompañado de toda la cúpula militar, daba instrucciones; y en la costa Caribe en la que el presidente Juan Manuel Santos, recibía los datos.

A las dos de la tarde, la emisora W Radio dio un extra con la información. El revuelo fue general porque se trataba del más importante guerrillero de las FARC, no solo por su liderazgo, sino por su altísima formación académica. Cano era el marxista más preparado en Colombia en la historia de la lucha armada en este país y el de mayor visión política. Tanto, que en los fracasados diálogos de paz en el Caguán (1998-2002) creó el Movimiento Bolivariano, una organización política que le serviría de instrumento para la paz o sería la plataforma para la guerra. Todo dependía del resultado. Como las conversaciones fracasaron, el movimiento pasó a ser clandestino y Cano trazó las pautas a seguir a su nuevo aparato ideológico. Entretanto, lideró al interior de las FARC el plan Renacer para volver a tomar oxígeno. Toda la política giraba en torno a él.

El ministro de Defensa tuvo que salir en la noche a aclarar algunas de las informaciones que daban cuenta de la baja de Pacho Chino, el hombre más cercano a Cano. Al hacerlo, en los medios de comunicación el frenesí bajó. Y se creyó que de nuevo el esfuerzo se había perdido. Sin embargo, a esa misma hora los militares ya habían recogido un cuerpo que por sus características físicas coincidían con las de Cano. Fue llevado en helicóptero a la ciudad de Popayán. De allí lo trasladaron en una ambulancia a Medicina Legal en donde se hicieron las pruebas dactilares. Sí. Era Cano. Sin embargo, el Gobierno ordenó repetir los exámenes para evitar cualquier equívoco. A las diez de la noche ya no había dudas y la noticia corrió como la pólvora.

En un viernes donde los informativos de la noche tienen poca audiencia porque la gente está de fiesta, todos se volcaron en la televisión. El parte de victoria lo dio el propio presidente Santos a la medianoche, una hora absolutamente inusual, aunque en esta ocasión era seguido por todo el país.

Este sábado, miles de colombianos sacaron banderas y el eco de los vivas al Gobierno y al Ejército se podían escuchar con nitidez. Aunque Cano decía que representaba al pueblo, su vida había terminado en medio del rechazo general porque los medios usados para alcanzar el poder generaron una espiral de violencia dolorosa. Sin embargo, aunque muchos creen que hoy se respira un aire mejor en el país, también es cierto que en este momento alrededor de 7.000 hombres de las FARC armados, pero sin un líder que les diga qué hacer.

5 November 2011 Last updated at 21:14 ET




Colombia president hails Farc leader Cano's killing

Colombian soldiers who took part in the raid against Alfonso Cno listen to news at a military base in Popayan President Santos said the security forces had changed Colombia's history by killing Alfonso Cano


Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has hailed the death of top Farc leader Alfonso Cano as the greatest blow against the left-wing guerrilla group.

Mr Santos also said the choice faced by the rebels was to demobilise, go to jail, or face an early grave.

He was speaking after travelling to the camp in Colombia's south-west where Cano was killed by the army on Friday.

Meanwhile, the Farc reportedly vowed to continue its decades-long fighting despite the death of their leader.

The pledge was made on the Swedish-based Anncol website, which has often carried rebel statements in the past.

Farc 'collaborators'

President Santos was speaking at army headquarters in Popayan, the capital of Cauca province, near the camp where Cano was shot dead during a battle with security forces.
Continue reading the main story
Alfonso Cano

Born 1948
Real name Guillermo Leon Saenz
Former academic from Bogota
Became Farc leader in 2008
Had been Colombian army's main target in recent months

Profile: Alfonso Cano

"It is the most devastating blow this group has suffered in its history," he said, adding that the operation had been long in the planning.

He said news of the death of Alfonso Cano, whose real name was Guillermo Leon Saenz, would change Colombia's history for the better.

And the president revealed that intelligence had been gathered "from a number of sources".

"And with the collaboration of people within the Farc, our armed forces slowly planned the operation they carried out yesterday."

Military officials said the operation was continuing, with 17 helicopters patrolling the area around the camp.

Mr Santos also sent a warning to all Farc members: "I want to send a message to each and every member of that organisation: 'Demobilise'... or otherwise you will end up in a prison or in a tomb. We will achieve peace".

But he also urged the armed forces not to feel triumphalist, but to persevere in their battle against the rebel group.
Beard shaved off
Alfonso Cano. File photo Alfonso Cano had a $4m prize tag on his head

On Friday morning, the Colombian Air Force started bombing the camp where Alfonso Cano was believed to be hiding. Later that day, special operations forces moved in.

They found items belonging to Cano, as well as computers, memory sticks, hard discs and $100,000 in cash.

They surrounded Cano and his men and, according to Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon, killed him in the firefight which ensued.

The defence ministry released pictures of the dead leader, with his trademark bushy beard shaved off.

Security forces have killed a number of Farc commanders and arrested many others in recent years. In September 2010, Mono Jojoy, another top Farc commander, was killed in a bombing raid.

The military has been able to expand its operations against the rebels with the help of the US, which has provided billions of dollars in funding, training and intelligence-sharing.

The Farc is on US and European lists of terrorist organisations.

Colombia's civil conflict has lasted more than four decades, drawing in left-wing rebels and right-wing paramilitaries.

5 November 2011 Last updated at 05:14 ET


Obituary: Alfonso Cano


File picture from 2000 Alfonso Cano (l) impressed the Farc leadership with his political ideas and ideology


When Farc leader Alfonso Cano was killed in a military operation on 4 November, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said it was the biggest blow to the guerrilla movement in its 47-year history.

The 63-year-old had taken over the leadership of the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the country's largest left-wing rebel group, in 2008.

Born to a middle-class family in Bogota in 1948, Alfonso Cano, whose real name was Guillermo Leon Saenz, studied anthropology and law at the prestigious National University in the capital.

He is believed to have developed a keen interested in left-wing politics during his time as a student, closely following the Cuban revolution.

Steep rise

He joined the Communist Youth movement and soon rose to a position of leadership thanks to his way with words and a good grasp of rhetoric.

Friends from his university days say he soon became convinced that armed struggle was the best way to fight capitalism, and began expressing sympathy for the Farc.

He is believed to have joined the group sometime in the late 1970s, taking on the alias of Alfonso Cano.

By 1978, he had been put in charge of fundraising for the group - security forces said he boosted the rebels' coffers through extortion and kidnappings for ransom.

His forte was ideology and politics though, and in the early 1980s he took part in peace negotiations between the rebels and the government of President Belisario Betancur.

He rose quickly through the Farc hierarchy, professing deep admiration for its chief ideologue, Jacobo Arenas.

After Arenas' death in 1990, Cano took over as the group's chief political negotiator and led the rebels' negotiating team at peace talks held in Venezuela in 1991 and Mexico in 1992, both of which ended in failure.

Key negotiator

During peace negotiations with the government of Andres Pastrana from 1999 to 2002, Alfonso Cano is said to have taken a back seat, reportedly not convinced that the renewed talks were the right strategy for the group to pursue.

During this time, he founded the Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia, a clandestine radical left-wing political group.

After the sudden death by natural causes of Farc leader Manuel Marulanda, Alfonso Cano took over the rebel movement's leadership.

From that moment on, he became the number one target for the country's security forces.

Escape artist

Earlier this year, the military said it had him cornered in his stronghold near Las Hermosas Canyon, in central Tolima province.
map

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said the government was breathing down his neck and that military intelligence was so good they knew "what he had for breakfast".

However, Cano managed to escape Tolima for the mountains of Cauca province.

Police intelligence units believe he took advantage of a Farc hostage release to break through the ever-tightening military cordon.

Under the terms for the release negotiated by the International Red Cross, the military agreed to halt its operations in the area for 48 hours.

However, when the Red Cross helicopters arrived at the agreed co-ordinates, neither the rebels nor the hostages were there.

President Santos said the rebels used the pause in military operations to smuggle Cano out of the area.

But in November 2011, the security forces said communication intercepts had helped them pinpoint Cano's location in Cauca.

Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said the presence of some of his personal belongings in the camp, such as his glasses, meant the man himself could not be far.

The head of the armed forces, Gen Alejandro Navas, said around 1,000 troops were involved in the final operation which led to his killing and that of several others Farc members.

Photos released by the Defence Ministry showed Cano laid out on a tarpaulin, without either his trademark glasses or full beard.

Mr Santos said his death was a message to "each and every" member of Farc: "Demobilise... or otherwise you will end up in a prison or in a tomb. We will achieve peace."

This article appeared some years ago and help shed some light on the dealings between the FARC guerrillas and the Government of Venezuela.


Colombia and Venezuela would subsequently signed deals that lowered the temperature between both nations after it appeared that a potential crisis could boil over between the two neighboring states after these files became public.

The FARC files

Just how much help has Hugo Chávez given to Colombia's guerrillas?

http://www.economist.com/node/11412645
May 22nd 2008 |

THEY represent only one side of a story, and most of their claims have yet to be independently corroborated. But Interpol has now concluded that the huge cache of e-mails and other documents recovered from the computers of Raúl Reyes, a senior leader of the FARC guerrillas killed in a Colombian bombing raid on his camp in Ecuador on March 1st, are authentic and undoctored. The documents throw new light on the inner workings of the FARC. And they raise some very pointed questions about the ties between Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, and a group considered to be terrorists by the United States and the European Union (EU).

Batches of the documents have been seen by The Economist and several other publications. They appear to show that Mr Chávez offered the FARC up to $300m, and talked of allocating the guerrillas an oil ration which they could sell for profit. They also suggest that Venezuelan army officers helped the FARC to obtain small arms, such as rocket-propelled grenades, and to set up meetings with arms dealers.

Venezuelan officials have dismissed the documents as fabrications. That was contradicted by Ronald Noble, Interpol's secretary-general, who announced in Bogotá on May 15th, after two months of study by a team of 64 foreign experts, that the computer files came from the FARC camp and had not been modified in any way. Mr Chávez called this “ridiculous”, questioning the impartiality of Mr Noble, who is American, and labelling him a “gringo policeman”. However, in one indication of their accuracy, the documents provided information that in March guided police in Costa Rica to a house where they found $480,000 in cash, as an e-mail suggested.



The FARC are in some ways a throwback to a past era in Latin America. In other ways they are part of the new face of organised crime in the region. Old-fashioned Marxists unmoved by the collapse of the Soviet Union, they have flourished since then by drug-trafficking and kidnapping. Their war against Colombia's elected government has almost no public support, especially since they showed no interest in making peace during three years of talks with the government from 1999 to 2002. Since then, a determined security build-up by Álvaro Uribe, Colombia's popular president, has put the FARC on the defensive, driving it into remote jungles and savannahs—and towards the country's borders.

Mr Chávez has long expressed sympathy for the FARC. But Colombian officials, backed by detailed testimony from guerrilla deserters, accuse Venezuela and Ecuador of more than rhetoric, saying they have turned a blind eye to guerrilla camps on their territory. The killing of Mr Reyes, a member of the FARC's seven-man secretariat, underlined the point. The captured documents seem to confirm that FARC commanders have co-ordinated closely with Venezuelan army and intelligence officers on the border for several years, according to a Colombian official.

The documents also cast light on the FARC's strategic thinking. Its overriding objective seems to be to obtain international recognition as a “belligerent force” and to persuade the EU to stop labelling it a terrorist group. The guerrillas are desperate to establish a “strategic alliance” with Mr Chávez. But that was still just an aspiration in early 2007, the documents suggest. “We don't know if we enjoy their trust,” writes Jorge Briceño (alias “Mono Jojoy”), the FARC's military leader, to other members of the secretariat.

Contacts intensified last September after Mr Uribe asked Mr Chávez to mediate with the FARC to release the guerrillas' hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, a politician with French and Colombian nationality. The secretariat agreed to send one of its members, Iván Márquez, to meet Mr Chávez in Caracas to talk about swapping the hostages for jailed guerrillas—but also, wrote Mr Briceño, “to lay the foundations for mutual political relations...even though this might be in the long term.”

At their meeting, Mr Chávez “approved totally and without batting an eyelid” a FARC request for $300m, Mr Márquez reported to his colleagues in a message published by Spain's El País and Colombia's Semana. In a long e-mail 12 days later, Mr Briceño notes that it was not clear whether the money was “a loan or for solidarity” but that the FARC should offer Mr Chávez help in return. According to a document obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Mr Chávez's interior minister, Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, asked the FARC to train Venezuelan soldiers in guerrilla tactics for use if the United States were to invade.

In an e-mail dated February 8th, Mr Márquez and a colleague report that Mr Chávez (whom they identify with the pseudonym “Ángel”) had told them that the first $50m was “available”, with another $200m over the course of the year. However, there is no corroboration as to whether any money was actually paid. Colombian officials have long said that the FARC was wealthy through drug money. So why were they so jubilant about the loan? Perhaps because army pressure against the guerrillas has disrupted their drug business. The government has evidence that some FARC fronts are short of cash and have trouble paying farmers for coca paste, says Sergio Jaramillo, the deputy defence minister.

The secretariat's e-mail correspondence sheds light on several other matters. It confirms that Manuel Marulanda, the FARC's veteran leader, is still alive and apparently in overall command. It also shows the FARC's cynicism about the plight of its hostages. Mr Briceño says repeatedly that he does not expect to achieve the hostage-for-prisoners swap while Mr Uribe is in power but that the FARC will keep pushing it to create problems for the president. When Mr Chávez asked for Ms Betancourt's release “we told him that if we did that we would be without cards,” Mr Márquez writes.

The e-mails show the extent to which the army has the FARC on the run: the secretariat members often complain of their difficulties in communicating with each other. Days after Mr Reyes was killed another member of the secretariat, Iván Ríos, was murdered by his own bodyguard. This week Mr Ríos's deputy, Nelly Ávila Moreno (aka “Karina”), surrendered. But the FARC is far from defeated. In an e-mail last August Mr Briceño notes that guerrilla landmines are undermining army morale. Their impact is “very good and we are going to increase them,” he writes.

The e-mails released so far represent only a fraction of the almost 40,000 written documents and 610 gigabytes of data on the computers. For all his bravado, Mr Chávez is clearly discomfited by all this. At a get-together of European and Latin American leaders in Lima on May 16th he was unusually conciliatory. Some Republicans in the United States have seized upon the computer cache as grounds for declaring Venezuela to be a state sponsor of terrorism. This could require the United States to impose trade sanctions on a country from which it buys some 10% of its imported oil—and so is unlikely to happen. And the e-mails are not a smoking gun implicating Mr Chávez unequivocally. It was Mr Márquez and other FARC commanders, not Mr Reyes, who handled relations with Venezuela. So there are no e-mails from Venezuelan officials on his computer.

Even so, the documents should trouble Venezuela's South American neighbours. None of them echoed Mr Chávez's call in January for the FARC to be recognised as legitimate belligerents. The centre-left governments in many countries are wary of Colombia's close alliance with the United States, which supplies it with military aid. But all have signed the Organisation of American States' democratic charter, requiring them to support, not undermine, each other's democracies. Last month José Miguel Insulza, the OAS's secretary-general, said that “no evidence” linked Venezuela to the FARC. But the evidence from the laptops suggests that there is certainly a case to be answered—by something more than a blustering denial.

A blast from the past makes the headlines again. But this one is toothless and is already in jail.





7 November 2011 Last updated at 06:47 ET


Carlos the Jackal faces new French bomb attack trial

Courtroom sketch of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez on the first day of his trial in Paris on 7 November 2011 "I am a professional revolutionary," Ilich Ramirez Sanchez told the court



Self-styled international revolutionary Carlos the Jackal has gone on trial in Paris over four bomb attacks in the early 1980s that killed 11 people.

Carlos, a Venezuelan whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, will appear before a panel of magistrates for a trial expected to last six weeks.

The 62-year-old is already serving a life sentence in France for the murder of two policemen in 1975.

He was captured by French special forces in Sudan in 1994.

By the time of his capture, he had earned global notoriety as a mastermind of fatal bomb attacks, assassinations and hostage-takings.

His most infamous act was leading a raid in Vienna in 1975, when his group took 11 ministers of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) hostage.
Train bombings

Ramirez looked relaxed in jeans and a blue jacket for the first day of his trial, with dozens of journalists and a motley collection of well-wishers filling the packed courtroom, the French news agency AFP reports.

"I'm a professional revolutionary," he told judge Olivier Leurent as the proceedings got under way.

The new charges relate to four deadly attacks in France in 1982 and 1983, which killed 11 people and wounded another 100.
Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, lawyer and wife of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, speaks to reporters at the court in Paris on 7 November 2011 Carlos the Jackal is being defended in court by his French lawyer wife Isabelle Coutant-Peyre

Prosecutors allege he carried out the attacks in order to pressure the authorities to release two of his accomplices, including Magdalena Kopp, who became his first wife. They had been arrested in Paris on suspicion of planning to attack the Kuwaiti embassy.

The first bombing, in March 1982, took place on board a train between Paris and Toulouse, killing five people and wounding 28. It was followed a month later by the car bombing of an anti-Syrian newspaper in Paris. One passer-by was killed and 60 injured.

The other two bombings took place on New Year's Eve 1983, with a bomb on a TGV fast train between Marseille and Paris that killed three people and wounded 13, and a bomb at a Marseille train station that killed two.

Some 20 witnesses, including family members, experts and former accomplices, are expected to be called, during the trial, the AFP reports.

Ramirez denies he had anything to do with the bombings. If found guilty, he could face another life sentence in prison.
Nickname

On Sunday, he told Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional that he had carried out more than 100 attacks, but said there had been "very few" civilian casualties.

"I calculated that they were fewer than 10%. So out of 1,500 to 2,000 killed, there were not more than 200 civilian victims."

Ramirez was born into a wealthy Venezuelan family, and studied in Moscow before joining the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He converted to Islam in 1975.

His links to such high-profile incidents as the Opec hostage-taking and the Palestinian hijacking of a French airline to Uganda in 1976 helped to make him the face of international terrorism during the 1970s and 1980s.

He got his nickname after a copy of Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal was found among his belongings.

Ramirez was seized from a hospital room in Sudan in 1994 and hauled to Paris inside a sack by French agents.

In 1997, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in France for the 1975 murders of two French intelligence agents and an informer.

Ramirez will be defended in court by Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, his lawyer from his original trial, whom he married in a Muslim ceremony in jail 10 years ago.

France
Carlos the Jackal laments not raising his children



Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal has expressed his regret at never being able to raise his children after spending the last 17 years behind bars.

Carlos the Jackal laments not raising his children
Venezuelan terrorist Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal Photo: JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images

8:25AM BST 19 Oct 2011


"I couldn't bring up my children, just the youngest one until the age of five or six years old and I regret that," he said.

Carlos insisted he still has his fighting spirit but bemoaned no longer having contact with ex-Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, a fellow inmate at his Paris jail.

"I still have the fighting spirit to criticise the illegality of my presence here in France," the Marxist-Leninist radical, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, told Europe 1 radio in a telephone interview.

"It's a miracle that I'm alive, I've survived so many operations," said Carlos, who is to go on trial next month over 1980s bomb attacks carried out in France.

Carlos, jailed for life in 1997 for the 1975 killing of two French policemen and a police informer, said he had one regret: "I sacrificed my family life. I was an absent husband most of the time."
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He said he had enjoyed spending time with fallen Panamanian dictator Noriega, jailed in France for money-laundering, but that the two were now kept apart.

"We know some of the same people. We talk about the past ... and the present," he said, deploring the fact that he has not been able to speak to Noriega for a week despite their requests to be kept in "the same group."

Carlos said he hoped to be freed one day, "by the grace of God and dodgy deals between France and Venezuela," after which he would "have the honeymoon that's years overdue" and visit the Colombian grave of Latin American independence icon Simon Bolivar.

The militant married his French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre in a Muslim ceremony while in jail.

Born in 1949, Carlos rose to prominence in 1975 when his commando group burst into the conference room where ministers from the powerful OPEC oil cartel were meeting in Vienna. He took 11 hostages.

Carlos will on November 7 be tried for "complicity in killings and destruction of property using explosive substances" for bombings in France in 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 and injured more than 100 people.

After two decades on the run, Carlos was finally captured in Khartoum in 1994 by French secret service agents acting with the help of the Sudanese government.