Colombia’s government has deployed a specialist task force to find a lost soldier who fell from a helicopter and has now reportedly been kidnapped by the FARC, local media reported on Thursday.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is working in conjunction with their Technical Investigation Team (CTI) to find agent Andres Felipe Mejia Lopez, who fell from a helicopter on May 5 during an exercise over the jungle in Guaviare, southern Colombia.
The routine mission was trying to identify cells of Colombia’s oldest guerrilla group, the FARC, in order to find leader Julian Gallo Cubillos, alias “Carlos Antonio Lozada,” who is believed to be in that region of the Amazon.
The current search party consists of 160 soldiers working in areas of dense jungle notorious for its guerrilla activity.
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Julian Quintana, director of the CTI told RCN radio that the team discovered Mejia’s rifle and backpack which suggests that the agent has been kidnapped by the FARC.
The version of events as to how Mejia came to be in the jungle has not been confirmed by the Prosecutor General’s Office.