FARC guerillas in Colombia. Photo: RedRadioVE.
This Monday, the Colombian prosecutor’s office suspended, at the request of President Gustavo Petro, 19 arrest warrants against dissidents of the defunct FARC guerrilla group. The president announced the start of a “second peace process” with the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who did not join the peace agreement of 2016.
“I decided to suspend these arrest warrants today,” Attorney General Francisco Barbosa said at an event.
The arrest warrants were lifted in order to establish a dialogue between the Colombian government and the FARC dissidents, as part of Petro’s total peace proposal. The purpose is to minimize the level of violence via agreements with armed organizations.
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Barbosa indicated that “those arrest warrants are suspended based on the legal and constitutional capacities of the president of the Republic, which stipulate that, for him, this organization has a political character upon which peace agreements with the national government can be negotiated.”
Likewise, the prosecutor explained that, “In this specific case for the prosecution there is a legal foundation, because the president gave the dissidents, who did not sign the Havana peace agreements, a political character.”
These negotiations with the FARC are occurring in tandem with the current dialogue with the National Liberation Army (ELN).
(RedRadioVE) by Dubraska Esteves
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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