Colombia's Prosecutor General Blames June Attack On President's Helicopter On FARC Rebels

BUENOS AIRES (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2021) The attack on the helicopter of Colombian President Ivan Duque last month was carried out by rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who were also responsible for an assault on a military unit in Cucuta, Prosecutor General Francisco Barbosa said on Thursday.

On June 25, Duque's helicopter was shot at from the ground, though no casualties resulted. Another FARC attack occurred in mid-June, when over 35 military personnel were injured in a car bomb explosion at an army base in Cucuta.

"The gathered data and technical evidence show that dissidents from the FARC are behind these two incidents," the prosecutor general told reporters.

Defense Minister Diego Molano added that, according to the Colombian authorities, "these attacks on the president and the military unit were planned in Venezuela.

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FARC, the largest rebel group in Colombia, was created in 1964 as a military wing of the local Communist Party to fight for building a "New Colombia" with social justice and equality. The group consisted of up to 20,000 militants.

Years of negotiations between the Colombian government and the rebels resulted in a peace agreement in 2016. A year later, the FARC ceased to be an armed group and reformed into a legal political party, the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force. However, a faction of FARC leaders announced a return to insurgency in 2019, accusing the Colombian government of failing to respect the peace agreement.