The Colombian army had some 100 men covertly operating in Venezuela to look for one of the FARC‘s most prominent leaders, “Ivan Marquez,” weekly Semana revealed Sunday based on a 2005 diplomatic cable.
In the cable, not fully published by the magazine, the Bogota embassy informs Washington on April 22 on the covert military action in the Venezuelan border state of Zulia.
According to the embassy, the mission of the military was to locate Ivan Marquez, a senior member of the FARC’s secretariat who is widely assumed to operate from Venezuela.
In the same cable, the Bogota embassy said that Colombia was carrying out other covert military action inside the neighboring country and was receiving help from Venezuelan policemen and soldiers to catch and deport more than 30 suspected members of the FARC.