Colombia’s armed forces released a ten page letter allegedly coming
from deceased founder and supreme leader of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda.
In the document, allegedly written to his troops five days before his
death in March, ‘Tirofijo’ speaks openly about the setbacks suffered by
the guerrilla.
The document, described and quoted by Colombian weekly Cambio, was seized in a FARC camp in the south of Colombia on October 31, army sources told the magazine.
If real, the document would give the army great insight in how big impact was of the deaths of commanders Raúl Reyes and Ivan Rios was and the information found on Reyes’ computer.
The magazine says the letter has become the ‘crown jewel’ of Colombia’s intelligence agencies.
In the letter, Marulanda acknowledges that the death of Reyes and the seizure of his computer militarily and politically set the guerrilla back a few years. “The secrets of the FARC have disappeared completely with the secret documents and conclusions of the ninth Conference,” the letter says.
Marandula predicts the content on the seized computers will be exploited by the Colombian Government to pressure the government of Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. These governments, according to files found on Reyes computers, had ties to the FARC both morally and financially.
The impact of the setbacks the FARC suffered before Marulanda’s death are “difficult to calculate”, the deceased supreme leader writes.
The authenticity of the letter wasn’t researched by any independent body.
