For the WTF?? Category: Colombia Offers $2.7 million for Marulanda's Body

[magbana]

Colombia offers bounty for FARC founder's body
Tue May 27, 2008 10:41pm EDT


BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian authorities are offering up to $2.7 million in bounty for the body of the founder and chief commander of the FARC rebels, who died after 40 years fighting the state, a top army official said on Tuesday.

FARC chief Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda died of a heart attack in March four decades after he formed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, Latin America's oldest insurgency, the rebels said on Sunday.

His death was a heavy blow to the FARC, which has already been weakened by the deaths of several top commanders over the last year in military strikes under President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed security crackdown.

"Without a doubt this has become a objective for us," said Army chief Gen. Mario Montoya. "It will be important for us to carry out identification of this body."

A peasant himself, Marulanda founded the FARC in 1964 as a Marxist-inspired ragtag army that grew to become a powerful subversive force with more than 17,000 fighters controlling large swaths of Colombia.

Under Uribe's government, the rebels have been steadily weakened and driven back to remoter parts of the country and violence has dropped sharply. But the rebels are still a capable force in areas where state presence is weak.

A FARC commander on Sunday acknowledged Marulanda died after an illness. But military officials do not dismiss the possibility he was wounded in bombardments around that time on the southern jungles where he was believed to be hiding.

The United States and European Union label the FARC a cocaine-trafficking terrorist group. But the rebels are still holding scores of hostages kept for years in jungle camps, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans.

(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta, writing by Patrick Markey, editing by Philip Barbara)


http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN2633810020080528

http://snipurl.com/2azl0

[struggle4progress]

1. Hmmm

[Judi Lynn]

2. None of their damned business! Speaking of bodies, remember the hostages who were killed

in a camp where they were being held by the FARC last year? Remember that the camp had come under fire by the Colombian military, and the FARC claimed the hostages had been killed in the crossfire? Remember Uribe claimed the FARC had simply killed them in cold blood, and launched a loud, shrill campaign crabbing about the FARC "executions?"

Recall that Uribe demanded that they hand over the bodies of the hostages so the Colombian government could see for themselves what the hell happened to them?

FARCs left the bodies where the Uribe government would get them, and they were taken for autopsies. What did we hear from the Uribe administration concerning their findings of the cause of death of these hostage remnants? NADA. Not a bleeping peep after they took the bodies.

Obviously, they determined the FARCs did NOT execute them after all, but were too cowardly, too dishonest to admit it.

[EFerrari]

3. They can't get more disgusting, can they. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

4. Don't think they could go any lower. This is Twilight Zone wierd. n/t