Ex-rebel negotiator’s arrest threatens to wreck peace process
COLOMBIA: Colombian authorities arrested a former top rebel peace negotiator on a United States drug warrant yesterday, delivering a major blow to the country’s already teetering attempts to put half a century of political violence behind it.
Seuxis Hernandez, a blind Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ideologue best known by his alias Jesus Santrich, was picked up at his residence in Bogota on charges that he conspired with three others to smuggle several tonnes of cocaine with a wholesale value of US$15 million (NZ$20.5m) into the US.
According to an Interpol notice, Santrich met with cocaine buyers at his residence on November 2, 2017, a day after one of his coconspirators delivered a 5kg sample of the drug to them at a hotel lobby in Bogota.
During the meeting and subsequent negotiations, he and his co-conspirators allegedly discussed plans for a 10-tonne shipment to the US, boasting that they had access to cocaine laboratories and US-registered planes to produce and move the drug inside Colombia, the world’s largest producer of the illegal substance.
President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed the arrest in a nationally televised address, saying his ‘‘hand won’t shake’’ in signing off on Santrich’s extradition in order to safeguard the peace agreement’s integrity.
Under the terms of the accord aimed at ending Latin America’s longest-running conflict, rebels who lay down their weapons and confess their war crimes to special peace tribunals are to be spared jail time and extradition. But they aren’t protected for crimes committed after the December 2016 signing.
‘‘The construction of peace requires the absolute commitment and respect for the law and the accords,’’ Santos said. ‘‘This is what the Colombian people demand. In this aspect, there can’t be any room for tolerance or weakness.’’
Santrich’s former comrades in arms accused the government of trying to sabotage the peace process.
‘‘This is the worst moment that the peace process has gone through,’’ said the former rebel leader known as Ivan Marquez, who served as chief negotiator during the peace talks. ‘‘The government has to act to prevent judicial setups like these from spinning out of control and generating a great deal of mistrust among all of the guerrillas.’’
But chief prosecutor Nestor Martinez said a New York grand jury handed down an indictment after evaluating evidence, including video and communications, which indicated that Santrich and three other co-conspirators who were also arrested hatched a plan in the second half of 2017 to smuggle into the US cocaine with a street value of US$320m.
FARC’s ties to Colombia’s drug underworld have been a sore spot for the rebels. FARC long funded itself by levelling a ‘‘war tax’’ on cocaine moving through territory it dominated, and 50 members of its leadership structure – though not Santrich – were indicted in 2006 on charges of running the world’s largest drug cartel.
But FARC has always denied direct involvement in the business itself, and rebel peace negotiators in 2013 denounced drug trafficking as a ‘‘scourge’’ that has ‘‘contaminated’’ the international financial system and generated a global health crisis.
Santrich, 51, was one of the first rebels to bet on peace, travelling to Norway’s capital, Oslo, in 2012 to start negotiations with Colombia’s government, then participating in talks that continued for the next four years in Cuba, where he earned a reputation as being a hardliner.
The son of two school teachers, Santrich joined a youth communist group as a student and entered the guerrilla movement in his early 20s. He rose through the FARC ranks to eventually join the central high command.
Since the signing of the peace accord, Santrich has lived in a twostorey home in a working-class neighbourhood of Bogota. Despite being blind, he has said he spends much of his time painting, using tacks stuck into a canvas to create an outline and guide his brush. His works hang on the walls of his living room, many of them depicting former guerrillas still being kept behind bars.