A day after surrendering to the army, a one-eyed, battle-hardened female rebel commander urged other guerrillas yesterday to follow her example and abandon their decades-long struggle.
Nelly Avila Moreno, better known as “Karina,” denied her bloody reputation during a news conference. She said she surrendered because she was encircled, had a bounty on her head and was spooked by the recent murder of a fellow rebel leader by one of his bodyguards.
Avila, 40, nevertheless expressed admiration for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has been implicated in seeking to arm and finance the rebels in documents the Colombian government says it found on the computer of a different slain guerrilla.
PHOTO: AFP
Her surrender on Sunday was a major propaganda victory for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who has made defeating the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) the cornerstone of his administration.
In recent months, the army had been closing in on Avila, who had a US$1 million bounty on her head. Just two weeks ago, Uribe appealed directly for her to turn herself in. She had been on the government’s most wanted list since 2002.
“To my comrades: Change this life that you are leading in the guerrilla group and re-enter society with the government’s reinsertion plan,” Avila told reporters yesterday, saying she had spent 24 years with FARC.
She said she was not sure of her legal status, but she should be able to apply for leniency under a law designed to encourage demobilization that caps prison terms at eight years.
Avila had commanded a contingent operating in northwest Colombia’s coffee-growing zone, where she said the rebels are now “breaking up.”
“The decision [to surrender] was made because of the pressure by the army in the area,” she said almost matter-of-factly, standing alongside her boyfriend, who surrendered with her and her daughter.
Authorities said Avila was wanted for murder, terrorism, rebellion and kidnapping. The presidency said she led a number of major attacks including a 2000 ambush that killed 13 soldiers. The chief prosecutor’s office said she was wanted for three massacres in 1999 and 2002, but provided no details.
Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Avila “had the guts to do any type of operation and managed to occupy one of the highest posts a woman has ever reached in the ranks of these terrorists.”
Avila denied being as “bloodthirsty” as she has been portrayed and rejected unsourced media reports implicating her in the 1983 killing of Uribe’s father.
She said she decided to give up on Sunday and contacted the army to send a helicopter. Images released by authorities show her and her boyfriend on a mountainside next to a bonfire they built to identify the pickup site.
While FARC estimates that about a third of their fighters are women, female commanders are still a rarity.
Avila’s comments gave a glimpse into how some parts of FARC are faring under a withering US-backed offensive by Colombia’s military, which has recently claimed the lives of several top commanders and isolated its leadership.
Avila said she had been virtually cut off for the past two years and out of contact with the guerrillas’ seven-member ruling secretariat. She said she had fewer than 50 rebels under her command when she decided to surrender.
She admitted to being shaken by the March killing of Secretariat member Ivan Rios by one of his bodyguards, who cut off Rios’ hand and delivered it with his laptop in return for a reward.
“It’s a difficult situation: You have a lot of fighters by your side, but you don’t know what each one is thinking,” Avila said. “Some of them are thinking of their economic situation.”
In response to a reporter’s question, Avila said she had no knowledge of Chavez arming or funding FARC.
Asked what the Venezuelan president means to the rebels, she simply said: “We admire Chavez for the way he is.”
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
RSS