BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A former leader of Colombia’s disbanded rebel army has been arrested as part of a drug-trafficking investigation at the request of U.S. officials, delivering a major blow to the country’s already fragile peace process, the movement’s political party said Monday.
There was no official word on why the former leader best known by his alias “Jesus Santrich” was taken into custody.
The political movement started by the former rebels said on social media that it was “the worst moment that the peace process has gone through.” It provided a copy of part of a Colombian search warrant that said authorities raided his home in Bogota at the request of the U.S. Embassy.
Santrich’s arrest was reported earlier by former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who said his home was raided at the same time as his former guerrilla comrades were meeting in the presidential palace with the visiting prime minister of Norway, which was a major supporter of the peace accord. They called on supporters to gather outside the chief prosecutor’s office to protest his detention.
The chief prosecutor’s office confirmed the arrest but said details would be released by the Colombian presidential palace.
Under a peace deal seeking to end Colombia’s half-century conflict, FARC members who lay down their weapons and confess their war crimes are to be spared jail time and extradition. But they aren’t protected for crimes committed after the December 2016 signing of the peace deal.
Santrich was a member of the FARC’s central high command, the members of which were indicted on drug trafficking charges by the U.S. in 2006.
Santrich, who is blind, was one of the first rebels to bet on peace, traveling to Norway’s capital in 2012 to kick of negotiations with Colombia’s government and then participating in talks that continued the next four years in Cuba.
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