Colombia confirms identity of murdered Ecuadoran couple

PASTO, Colombia: Two bodies found in the thick jungle of southwestern Colombia are those of an Ecuadorian couple kidnapped by a dissident FARC rebel group, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Ecuador’s Communication Ministry had said on Tuesday that the bodies ‘could’ be those of Oscar Villacis, 24, and Katty Velasco, 20, who went missing on April 17.

Colombian forensic authorities have now confirmed their identity.

Their kidnapping had been claimed by the Oliver Sinisterra Front, a rebel group led by exFARC guerrilla Walther Arizala, who goes by the alias Gaucho.

Arizala’s group also claimed the kidnapping and murder of two Ecuadoran journalists and their driver, who went missing in March before their bodies were found by Colombian soldiers two weeks ago in the same jungle border area between the two countries.

The director of Colombia’s Legal Medicine Institute, Carlos Valdes, said the couple had been dead for ‘approximately two months’.

Their disappearance and murder, and that of the press team, has strained relations between Colombia and Ecuador.

After the first abductions, the two countries had launched a joint military operation against Arizala. The thick jungle border area has been wracked by drugrelated violence ever since the dissolution of FARC, which fought a 30-year guerrilla war against the Colombian government. — AFP