Story By: Lisa-Maria Goertz, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
A former member of the notorious FARC guerilla army in Colombia is the latest to be assassinated in a reported vendetta against those who signed the peace treaty with the government.
The 32-year-old former guerrilla member, Fredy Fajardo Avila, was reportedly killed in his house in Uribe, in the central Colombian department of Meta.
The news was shared on the Twitter page of the political party FARC, saying: “We denounce another murder!
“Fredy Fajardo Avila was assassinated in Uribe #Meta. Including this companion, a total of 217 peace signatories have been assassinated in these years. Mr. @IvanDuque you are responsible, your omission and complicit indication are part of the extermination against us.”
According to local newspaper El Tiempo, a police report describes how two armed men arrived at the house of Fajardo and without exchanging any words, directly opened fire on him.
According to El Tiempo, the mayor or Uribe, Marcelino Chacon, said that Fajardo was in the process of reincorporating into FARC, this time as a political party, where he had originally formed part oyouf their 40th front.
Chacon went on to say that the authors of the murder were in uniform and that the authorities believe they were FARC dissidents, who reject the peace agreement and want a return to arms.
FARC, originally the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, was a guerrilla movement funded by kidnap and ransom, illegal mining, drug trafficking and extortion until it became a communist political party in Colombia in 2017 following a peace agreement with the government.
The peace agreement allowed their participation in politics as a legal party following their successful disarmament.
However, since then, the FARC party say that 217 members who signed the peace agreement have been killed, calling out the current president Ivan Duque and the government for their indifference to the murder of its members.
The National Police announced that they have deployed elite corps in coordination with the Special Investigation Unit of the Prosecutor’s Office to find and capture those responsible for the murder.
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