Not showing up for a Colombian military exam automatically gives one a remiso status – a deserter. With a FARC peace deal imminent, that could change.
Illegal coca cultivation is surging in Colombia, erasing one of the showcase achievements of U.S. counternarcotics policy and threatening to send a burst of cheap cocaine through the smuggling pipeline to the United States.
After three years of discussions in Havana, negotiators for the Colombian government and the rebels have arrived at a place tantalizingly close to peace. But in the southwestern cordilleras of Cauca province, where thousands have been killed or driven from their homes, the distance to peace seems far greater.
HAVANA, Cuba – Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the leader of the FARC rebel group announced a major breakthrough Wednesday in their peace negotiations, bringing the country to the verge of ending one of the world's longest-running wars.
Diego Alfonso Navarete Beltrán faces the possibility of a maximum sentence of life in prison for participating in the kidnapping of U.S. defense contractors Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell in 2003 after their plane made an emergency landing during an anti-drug surveillance mission.
The Colombian government reached a historic agreement Sunday with leftist FARC guerrillas to de-escalate the decades-long armed conflict, diplomats in Havana said.
There are no precise figures on how many minors have been recruited by leftist guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and drug gangs in Colombia's long-running, tangled conflict. But the state-run Family Wellbeing Institute says it has helped more than 5,000 child recruits since 1999.
After the World Health Organization warned in March that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic," President Santos's cabinet called into question whether to continue the air war on coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is set to arrive Thursday to help facilitate negotiations. Both sides will also meet with newly-appointed U.S. special envoy to Colombia Bernard Aronson.
Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) on Tuesday raided 12 locations – including some Public Security Ministry units – as part of an ongoing gunrunning investigation allegedly connected to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, according to statements from the OIJ and MSP.
