Colombian authorities catch FARC commander, collaborators

Colombia's National Police reported on 21 May the arrest of four members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) including a local commander, in undated operations in the district of Buenos Aires in the southern department of Cauca. The detained were identified as the deputy-commander of the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Front, a guerrilla dubbed Horacio, and three other fighters whose noms de guerre were el Perverso, Gabriel el mocho and Chamorro, Caracol radio and the National Police website reported on 21 May. Bomb-making equipment was confiscated from the detained, the National Police chief José Roberto León stated. Police believe Horacio was involved in more than 160 attacks on civilians and state installations in his 18 years in the FARC. These included bomb attacks on the judiciary building in the city of Cali in 2008, on the offices of the radio broadcaster RCN in 2005, and attacks on four police stations that killed 12, the Police website reported. In separate operations in the districts of Medellín and Bello in Antioquia, police caught three suspected members of the FARC's Fifth Front, described as employed in propaganda and public relations, the National Police reported on 21 May. The FARC separately denied in a communiqué on 22 May any link with the kidnapping of two Spanish tourists in north-eastern Colombia, Radio Santa Fe reported. The tourists were said kidnapped on 17 May near the Cabo de la Vela point on the Caribbean coast, by individuals who later called to say they were from the FARC. The FARC's "foreign minister" Rodrigo Granda said in Cuba that all FARC units were following the directive issued on 20 February 2012 to end kidnappings for ransom.