Colombian police have captured a guerrilla suspected of killing a U.S. military contractor and a Colombian soldier after their surveillance plane crashed in the jungle in 2003, authorities said Saturday.
Judicial police director Luis Ramirez alleged that Jose Armando Cadena Cabrera, who went by the nom de guerre "Bronco," was personally responsible for the two killings and was part of a band of rebels that kidnapped three other Americans who were on the plane.
"The entire crew survived the plane crash and 'Bronco' killed the U.S. citizen Thomas John Janis and the soldier Luis Alcides Cruz, who refused to be kidnapped," Gen. Ramirez said in a phone interview.
The other three Northrop Grumman Corp. contractors on the plane — Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell — wrote in a book this year that a guerrilla named Sonia told them she killed Cruz and Janis, who was from Montgomery, Alabama.
Ramirez said authorities have begun a formal investigation of Cadena Cabrera on suspicion of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy.
Cadena Cabrera was captured in the capital, apparently while conducting intelligence work for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Gonsalves, Howes
and Stansell spent more than five years in FARC captivity after the
Feb. 13, 2003, crash. They were rescued in July 2008 by a Colombian
military operation that also freed 12 other high-profile hostages,
including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. (AP)
