FARC recognizes kidnapping as ‘serious mistake’ and asks victims for forgiveness
The former guerrilla and now FARC political party asked public forgiveness on Monday (14) for the thousands of people it kidnapped in Colombia and expressed regret for the “pain” and “humiliation” it caused.
“The kidnapping was a serious mistake that we can do nothing but regret”, presented the party leadership in the most forceful apology message it has added since peace was decreed in 2016.
A formerly more powerful rebel organization in America, involved in conflicts for nearly six decades, admitted that the “kidnapping has damaged the legitimacy and credibility” of the armed movement against the Colombian state.
“This ballast today weighs on the conscience and heart of each and every one of us,” he added in a public statement.
The former guerrilla is responsible for atrocities in the court created after the peace agreements that allowed the demobilization of some 13,000 rebels, including 7,000 fighters.
In the message, the FARC party makes sense of the pain it caused to “so many families” and cited the case of Andrés Felipe Pérez, a 12-year-old child who died of cancer in 2001 while his father, a corporal in the police, was in power. rebels. The father ended up being killed in captivity.
“We feel like a stab in the heart the shame that produces us for not having heard the cry of Andrés Felipe Pérez. We cannot make up for lost time to avoid pain and as humiliations that we cause to all abductees, ”says the party.
The Justice of the Peace investigates more than 20,000 kidnappings carried out by the rebels who dropped their weapons, including Franco-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, who spent six years in captivity before being released in a military operation in 2008.
The leaders of the former guerrilla, who in addition to kidnappings induced to accusations of recruiting minors, who receive sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
Although the FARC’s disarmament has significantly eased violence in Colombia, armed groups financed by drug trafficking still operate in the country and, in recent weeks, have organized massacres and murders.
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