Emails exchanged between the FARC’s current and former commanders have revealed activities of the group’s new leader “Timochenko” over the past eight years.
The emails were extracted from the computers of fallen FARC leaders “Raul Reyes” and “Mono Jojoy,” according to newspaper El Espectador.
The letters reveal Timochenko’s alliances with the ELN and other illegal groups, his work as coordinator of several key guerrilla fronts, his landmine strategies, and his close ties with extradited paramilitary leader Carlos Mario Jimenez, alias “Macaco.”
In an email dated February, 2007, Timochenko stressed the need to extort money from foreign and domestic companies, adding businesses which “fail to pay taxes” could be most effectively pressured through coordination between different FARC blocs.
Six months later he reported on the FARC’s use of landmines to pressure the companies to comply when he wrote, “The mines have been key in this last operation that took nearly six months. It seems [the companies] are leaving some sites.”
According to Colombian authorities, the email analysis has given them a complete dossier of Timochenko and those who led before him. They say his position in the movement is radical and that he has direct ties to drug trafficking. They also claim he is trying to secure alliances with criminal gangs ELN and EPL, while seeking new strategies to distribute FARC propaganda.
Authorities tracking Timochenko’s movements say he is more mobile than anyone before him in the area of Catatumbo, a region close to the Venezuelan border which has historically experienced one of the highest levels of violence in Colombia.
The seized emails have provided authorities not only with logistical information concerning drugs, weapons, and strategies of the FARC, but also a more concise profile into the personality of the man who embodies the most violent wing of the organization.