A Colombian labor rights activist has been convicted for being a member of rebel group FARC‘s so-called international commission that is alleged to seek foreign support for the guerrillas, local media reported Wednesday.
Labor rights activist Liliany Patricia Obando was convicted for rebellion, a common sentence for alleged FARC rebels, four months after she had been released from prison where she had been incarcerated since her arrest in 2008.
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The unionist was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison and a fine of $370,000. Obando had already spent three and a half years in jail while awaiting trial.
According to a Bogota judge, the prosecution provided sufficient evidence to conclude that Obando, who has strong ties to international human rights NGOs, was a member of the FARC.
The evidence came from computers found by the Colombian military in raids of FARC camps.
Initially, Colombian authorities accused the labor rights worker of having been the girlfriend of “Raul Reyes,” the FARC’s informal foreign minister who was killed in a cross-border raid in Ecuador in March 2008.
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