A Spanish judge on Monday formally accused the Venezuelan government of illicit cooperation with internationally designated terrorist groups the ETA and the FARC.
The judge, Eloy Velasco, delivered the allegations in a 26 page indictment, charging seven members of the FARC and six members of the Basque separatist group the ETA, with terrorism, conspiracy to commit murder, and numerous other offenses, reported El Mundo.
The indictment includes evidence that a suspected member of the ETA, Arturo Cubillas Fontan, has served numerous high-level roles within the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez, and acted as a link between the ETA, the FARC, and Venezuela.
The judge claims that the FARC and the ETA have been in cooperation for years, with numerous ETA members being trained in FARC camps.
Judge Velasco reports that in March and September of 2000, two members of the FARC, Edgar Gustavo Navarro Morales alias “El Mocho” and Victor Ramon Vargas Salazar alias “Chato”, went to Spain to seek help from the ETA to locate and assassinate former Colombian president Andres Pastrana, who at the time was living in Madrid.
The judge also reports that the FARC sought the ETA’s help in locating Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, but did not mention a date nor location for a potential attack.
Of the five other indicted ETA members, the judge reports that three of them have been living in Cuba since the 1980s, one lives in Mexico, and the other’s location remains unknown.
The judge said he will work with the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Interior, in order to secure the bilateral cooperation with the Cuban and Venezuelan governments to apprehend the condemned individuals, who have taken refuge in their countries.
The indictment from the Spanish judge stems back to November when a Spanish national prosecutor requested for the court to indict the suspected ETA and FARC members, citing evidence discovered on the captured computer of Raul Reyes, who died during the Colombian military operation in Ecuador in March of 2008.
Both the ETA and the FARC are Marx-inspired organizations designated by both the U.S. and E.U. as terrorist organizations, who have been waging war against their respective governments since the 1960s.
