Colombian authorities provided details on fourteen members of the FARC-linked narco-trafficking group, who were arrested earlier this week, as well as more information on their operations, reports Semana.
Police director General Rafael Parra said the fourteen individuals, who were apprehended in the departments of Huila, Tolima, Cundinamarca, and Antioquia, include Jonas de Jesis Rincon, alias “Juan,” and Mario Sanchez Zabaleta, a Mexican citizen who acted at the group’s main link to Mexico’s Juarez cartel.
Zabaleta, who was arrested in Bogota, “is definitely the link between the Southern Block of the FARC for the trafficking of cocaine,” and was in charge of receiving two tons of cocaine every month from Colombia, Parra claimed.
“Juan,” Parra went on to explain, “was the person who was constantly going to Panama, where he would have meetings to negotiate the exchange of drugs for guns.”
According to the police chief, the group of arrested men was responsible for moving cocaine “produced in laboratories under the control of FARC’s Southern Block, mainly in the department of Caqueta, leaving by land and air towards Tumaco, and to the gulf of Uraba, in the northwest of the country.”
In exchange for the drugs, the FARC would receive arms, according to police reports, which also highlight that the traffickers would use go-fast speed boats to export the drugs.
Parra’s reference to fourteen detainees, differs from earlier reports, in which authorities claimed to have arrested fifteen alleged gang members.