“Timochenko,” the supreme leader of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group FARC, on Sunday denied recent atrocities allegedly committed by members of his rebel group.
In an open letter published on the FARC’s website, Timochenko said that recent stories of guerrilla brutality against civilians were invented by military intelligence.
“A passerby in [the southwestern department of] Cauca activated a landmine when his bicycle fell right on it, a strange farmer appears with his lips sown because he refused to activate a ‘donkey bomb’ and a supposed mine of ours in [the northern town of] El Tarra affects children in a school,” the guerrilla leader, whose real name is Timoleon Jimenez, wrote.
“Such atrocities were created by military intelligence. None of them would withstand the proper inquiry,” Timochenko said.
The case of the tortured farmer recently was doubted also by locals.
The FARC are considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the E.U. for their use of landmines, child soldiers and kidnapping in their 48-year long fight against the Colombian state.