Eleven highly-ranked FARC members Tuesday were sentenced in absentia to 57 years and 11 months in prison for their part in the 2005 bombing of a rural hotel.
A Villavicencio judge sentenced the head of the rebel organization along with ten other commanders for killing six people and injuring 19 more in a bomb attack on 20 February 2005 in Puerto Toledo, a village in Colombia’s eastern Meta department.
The bomb was activated when Army personnel searched the Acapulco Hotel, owned by Genner ‘Jhon 40’ Garcia, a FARC leader and military prisoner. The blast killed two children, an adult and three soldiers, and injured a further eleven civilians and eight soldiers.
The Prosecution said that at that time military ‘Operation Legendary 3 ‘ was in progress, aimed to “neutralize the trafficking and sale of drugs.”
The Prosecutor General in a press release found the eleven insurgents responsible for “murder of protected persons in homogeneous and heterogeneous competition with aggravated murder, terrorism and rebellion,” reported W Radio.
The First Specialized Court of Villavicencio handed down the sentence, which in absentia found guilty seven members of the FARC Secretariat, along with four subordinate officers. The Central Command of the group is led by Guillermo León Sáenz (also known as ‘Alfonso Cano’), linked to the case with Luis ‘Mono Jojoy’ Suarez, the organization’s military leader.