Colombia’s Ministry of Defense on Thursday published e-mails it says were retrieved from the computers of slain FARC leader “Mono Jojoy,” which discuss public relations strategies and plan the 2009 kidnap of the governor of Caqueta.
One e-mail written by guerrilla Joaquin Gomez to Mono Jojoy, dated May 3, 2009, talks about a plan to kidnap Governor Luis Fernando Cuellar. The governor was taken from his home in December 2009 and found the next day with his throat slit. The e-mail discusses the possibility of kidnapping the governor’s son as well, and asks the FARC leader to decide “if we should do it or not.”
“If we take the governor, it would have a political impact and an economic character,” Mono Jojoy’s email reads, whereas kidnapping Cuellar’s son “would only have an economic character. To which of these two [options] are we inclined?”
Another e-mail from Gomez, dated June 3, 2009, suggests publishing a press release which says that the FARC’s “military actions” in Garzon, in which a councilor was kidnapped, were only aimed at “Uribistas” – politicians aligned with then-President Alvaro Uribe – and that “public officials not aligned with Uribismo don’t have anything to fear.”
The guerrilla says that this policy would help “isolate” Uribistas and “prepare the ground” for agreements between the FARC and other anti-Uribe groups, to form “a grand anti-Uribista front.”
Jose Armando Acuña, Garzon city councilor, was kidnapped in May last year and has not yet been released.