Colombia holds suspected murderers, guerrillas

Colombia was reported to have detained all of three gang members sought for the massacre of 10 peasants in northern Colombia on 7 November, the last being caught at an unspecified location on 24 November. President Juan Manuel Santos said in Santa Marta on Colombia's northern coast that day that the state had honoured its promise to catch the culprits, El Espectador reported. He also thanked neighbouring Panama for arresting or helping catch at an unspecified location, two presumed members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with 540 kilograms of cocaine. The state separately arrested at an unspecified date in the north-eastern town of Saravena a member of Front 38 of the FARC, described as one of 25 terrorists most sought in the eastern state of Arauca, El Espectador reported on 25 November. The detained - identified by the pseudonym El Culeco - was thought to be in charge of tracking troops and officials in Arauca and to have been involved in an attack in December 2010 that killed two policemen. In separate operations in districts west of the capital Bogotá, police detained nine members of Colombia's Communist Party and of the leftist Marcha Patriótica association, all suspected of being collaborators or members of the FARC, El Espectador reported on 24 November. The detained were described as students, teachers and trade unionists and arrested in Manizales, Pereira, Cali and Palmira; police handed them over to the judiciary in Manizales the capital of the Caldas department, for more investigations. Their defence lawyers reportedly declared that authorities were trying to revive cases and charges for which the suspects had been tried and acquitted. Marcha Patriótica seeks among other goals a negotiated end to the state's conflict with the FARC; it was formed in 2012 in the wake of protests against the policies of the then conservative president Álvaro Uribe Vélez. The Communist Party was founded in 1930.