The political leader of the FARC, the group that demobilized thousands of guerrillas last year, reiterated Monday he won’t take seat in the senate on Friday.
Luciano Marin, a.k.a. “Ivan Marquez,” said in April that he would refuse to take seat in the Senate after the arrest of the FARC’s purported leader in the House of Representative over a vague US drug trafficking claim.
The former guerrilla leader said that his place will be taken by Israel Alberto Zuñiga, a.k.a. “Benkos Bioho.”
The FARC demobilized last year after being promised political participation and a series of reforms that would improve the situation in Colombia’s impoverished countryside.
FARC’s political leader won’t enter politics unless ideologue is released
In a letter made public on Monday, Marin confirmed that he renounces his seat over the “judicial set-up or warped entrapment of the Prosecutor General and [US counter-narcotics agency] DEA” that led to the arrest and could lead to the extradition of long-time FARC ideologue “Ivan Santrich.”
Additionally, Marin said, the transitional justice system that seeks to prosecute war crimes committed by many parties in the half-a-century armed conflict has been “distorted.”
“There exist no record on planet earth of a peace agreement that after it was signed and executed by the parties was modified at the whim of people with interests” in the war and the aftermath of it, Marin said in his letter.
According to the FARC leader, a series of “breaches” of the 2016 peace agreement on behalf of the state made him decide to abandon his political ambitions.
Luciano Marin, a.k.a. “Ivan Marquez”
Prominent Colombians and multiple former FARC commanders had asked Marin to reconsider his April announcement, but to no avail.