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/ 7 December 2011
Tens of thousands of Colombians have protested across the country to demand an end to half a century of guerrilla violence and kidnapping.
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/ 27 November 2011
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels executed four members of the military during a botched mission to free them after a decade as hostages.
Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt has written for the first time about her six-year jungle ordeal.
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/ 23 December 2009
Colombia said on Tuesday Farc guerrillas slit a state governor’s throat hours after they kidnapped him during a brazen raid.
A Thai court on Tuesday refused to extradite Viktor Bout to the US to face trial on charges of supplying weapons to Colombian rebels.
Colombian troops have killed a Farc guerrilla commander accused of ordering extortion and bombings around Bogota, said authorities.
Ingrid Betancourt said in an interview on Sunday she would return to Colombia ”in a few days” to write a play about her experience.
Harrowing details about the captivity of Ingrid Betancourt in Columbia emerged on Friday as doubts surfaced over the official version of their rescue.
It was Ingrid Betancourt’s 2 321st day in captivity and it started like any other. At 4am she woke up and prayed to God.
High-profile hostage Ingrid Betancourt was shocked when aid workers supposedly transporting her to a new location turned out to be state soldiers.
The founder and chief commander of Colombia’s Farc rebel force, Manuel Marulanda, has died after more than 40 years fighting the state from jungle and mountain camps. If confirmed, the death of Manuel Marulanda, who organised the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas in the 1960s, would be the heaviest blow yet to Latin America’s oldest insurgency.
The number of conflicts in which child soldiers were involved dropped sharply from 27 in 2004 to 17 at the end of 2007, according to a report on Tuesday by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. But despite the decline, the report said tens of thousands of children remain in the ranks of militias and other armed groups in at least 24 countries.
The average cocaine user in Britain probably does not spend too much time thinking about where their drug of choice comes from. If they did, they might reflect on how it travels from South America to the bars, clubs and kitchen tables of the United Kingdom.
Calls to end forced marriage, domestic abuse and job discrimination marked International Women’s Day on Saturday as demonstrators took to the streets worldwide. The issues highlighted crossed a wide spectrum, including abortion rights in Italy, violence against women in Iraq and women hostages in Colombia.
The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela ended a border dispute on Friday with a summit handshake after a week of regional diplomacy in the face of hostile rhetoric and troop build-ups.”And with this … this incident that has caused so much damage [is] resolved,” leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez accused his Colombian counterpart of war crimes as Venezuela and Ecuador turned up the heat on Bogotá over its military strike on an insurgent camp inside Ecuador. ”A war crime occurred there,” Chávez charged late on Wednesday at a joint press conference with Ecuadorian counterpart Rafael Correa.
Venezuela deployed tanks and its air and sea forces toward the Colombian border in its first major military mobilisation in a crisis with Colombia, the country’s defence minister said on Wednesday. The move escalates tensions in a dispute over a Colombian weekend raid inside another of its neighbours, Ecuador.
Colombia said on Tuesday that Farc rebels had been planning to make a ”dirty bomb” with radioactive material, threatening the entire Latin American region. The charges by Vice-President Francisco Santos marked a dramatic turn in a regional crisis that has seen Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia.
Venezuela and Colombia were locked in a tense stand-off on Monday, with explosive accusations levelled against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez a day after he ordered tanks and troops to the border. There was no sign of imminent conflict but the war of words escalated when Colombia accused Chávez of bankrolling Marxist rebels.
Colombia’s military said on Saturday its troops had killed a top rebel commander in an attack on a jungle camp across the border in Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America’s oldest guerrilla insurgency. Raul Reyes, one of seven members of the secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, was killed in an operation that included air strikes and fighting with rebels across the border.
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/ 27 February 2008
Two Venezuelan helicopters flew into Colombia on Wednesday to pick up four lawmakers held hostage for years in jungle camps by Marxist rebels, in a diplomatic victory for Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia last month released two politicians in a deal brokered by Chávez.
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/ 14 January 2008
A Colombian woman freed last week after six years as a rebel hostage arrived in Bogota on Sunday and headed straight for a reunion with her son, Emmanuel, born in a jungle camp and then taken away by her captors. A slightly dazed Clara Rojas arrived from Caracas, where she had been since leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez brokered her release.
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/ 10 January 2008
An airborne operation to pluck two hostages from their rebel captors deep in the Colombian jungle lurched back to life on Thursday, after a botched handover attempt collapsed 10 days ago. Two Venezuelan helicopters departed for Colombia at dawn, said a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
A delicate mission to free three hostages held by Colombian guerrillas appeared to collapse on Monday as the government and rebel leaders accused each other of trying to kill the deal. The Venezuela-led plan to pick up two women hostages and a child born to one of them in captivity has been repeatedly delayed since last Thursday.
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/ 22 December 2007
Venezuelan authorities are standing by to receive three hostages Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels have said could be released as early as this weekend after spending years of captivity in the jungle. ”The mobilisation for the operation has begun,” one source close to the government said.
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/ 30 November 2007
Colombian officials on Friday showed recently seized videotapes of rebel-held hostages, among them three United States defence contractors and a former presidential candidate — the first images in years providing evidence the captives may be alive.
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/ 26 November 2007
Colombia and Venezuela faced the worst crisis in their relations in years on Monday after the Colombian president accused Venezuela of seeking to install a Marxist regime in his country and Caracas ”froze” relations between the two countries. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said earlier he was putting bilateral ties in a ”freezer”.
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/ 27 September 2007
Militants are exploiting weak law enforcement in West Africa to raise funds from rackets ranging from people smuggling to drug trafficking and even fake Viagra, experts said. In the past two years, South American cartels have switched their trafficking routes into Europe to funnel drugs via lawless swathes of war-scarred West Africa.