FARC terrorist and Colombian Senator “Jesús Santrich,” missing for over a month after being charged with large-scale cocaine trafficking, reemerged in a video Thursday morning announcing the Marxist group would return to violence despite the 2016 peace deal that put him in Congress.
Santrich appeared alongside another terrorist leader, “Iván Márquez,” and a small group of terrorists in military fatigues to announce violence against the state in retaliation for the current government of President Iván Duque not living up to the commitments of the peace deal. Márquez was also offered a senate seat but rejected it after Santrich’s arrest.
FARC terrorists typically use noms de guerre in public.
Santrich disappeared in July after authorities charged him with attempting to smuggle 10,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States, after agreeing to the peace deal with the Colombian government. Márquez, the terrorist group’s second-in-command, disappeared in 2018 after the first charges were levied against Santrich.
Santrich was arrested in April but controversially granted temporary freedom in May.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist terrorist group behind most of the 260,000 dead at the hands of guerrillas in the past century, legally became a political party, the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force, following the 2016 deal. As their widespread killings, kidnappings, rapes, and forced abortions made them widely unpopular with the Colombian people, the FARC insisted on the government handing them unelected seats in Congress. Ten seats in the Colombian Senate currently belong to FARC terrorists, a fifth of which are now missing and engaging in terrorism.
The FARC’s return to terrorism presents a major embarrassment for former President Juan Manuel Santos, who unconstitutionally forced the peace deal into effect over the will of the Colombian people and won the Nobel Peace Prize for it. Santos insisted on Thursday morning that the peace deal was still a success.
“We announce to the world that the second Marquetalia has begun, under the universal right of all the peoples of the world to rise up in arms against oppression,” Márquez said in the video, referring to the hometown of the FARC, where the terrorist group once attempted to establish a communist “republic.”
Standing in front of a yellow sign reading “so long as there is a will to struggle, there is hope to overcome,” featuring the photos of FARC founder Manuel Marulanda and Venezuelan founding father Simón Bolívar, Márquez announced “a new stage of struggle to awaken consciousnesses.”
“We will not continue to kill each among class brothers so that the shameless oligarchy continues to manipulate our destiny,” the FARC leader said, vowing to turn his weapons against the “oligarchy” instead.
At press time, contrary to Thursday’s announcement, the top message on the front page of the FARC’s official website reads, “Our Only Weapon Will Be Our Word,” the title of an article written by FARC chief “Timochenko” in 2016.
Timochenko, who authored the deal with Santos, immediately rejected the message of the video, telling Colombia’s La W Radio that he felt “shame” watching it.
“Over 90 percent of the former fighters have stuck to the peace process,” Timochenko claimed. “Here are most of us and, modesty aside, the best of us.”
“I feel shame over what the comrades did,” Timochenko said of the FARC leaders, “but that is an individual decision that does not represent the rest.”
Another FARC terrorist, Senator Carlos Lozada, called the video a “big mistake.”
“There is no room for armed struggle in today’s Colombia,” he said. “That was a path that we tried for over 50 years without success. We have to remain firm in defense of the [peace] agreement.”
The agreement granted the FARC representation in Congress without election and kickstarted a process of reintegrating former FARC terrorists into society through reeducation camps. The plan would see over 7,000 terrorists living alongside civilians, many who were either abducted and brainwashed into terrorism as children or were born to terrorists and never knew life outside of the FARC.
The peace deal also allowed Timochenko to launch a bid for the presidency in 2018. Angry crowds met him at multiple venues by throwing eggs and garbage at him, forcing him to suspend his campaign. Timochenko formerly withdrew from the campaign in March 2018 after suffering a heart attack.
Santos, the architect of the deal, surfaced on Twitter repeating Timochenko’s talking points. “90 percent of the FARC remain in the peace process,” Santos wrote. “We have to continue to commit to them. The deserters must be thoroughly repressed. The battle for peace will not stop!”
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