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Former FARC leader, Ivan Marquez, criticized Colombia's interference in Venezuela's affairs and defended the country’s president Nicolas Maduro Wednesday.
In a letter, the former guerrilla leader said that the Colombian president, Ivan Duque, "has no moral authority to give the government of Nicolas Maduro the title of dictatorship, nor to threaten anyone with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the violation of human rights."
In the armed conflict, 7 million people were displaced, 260,000 killed, and 80,000 forcibly disappeared. Between November 2016 and May 2018, 385 people an 80 FARC members have been killed, according to local rights group, Research Institute for Development and Peace. However, teleSUR’s monitoring places death count at 400. State security forces killed eleven.
Marquez described "a shame, the diplomacy of war deployed by the Colombian Foreign Ministry against its neighboring country, which turned Venezuela into a monotheme of its foreign policy.”
The letter also expressed Marquez’s surprise at the Colombian government’s offer of protection to Venezuelan opposition deputy, Julio Borges. Borges has been accused of being behind the August 4th drone attack on Maduro.
In protest of Jesus Santrich’s arrest on April 9th and on the allegation that there have been breaches of the peace agreement, Marquez refused his appointment as a senator. Santrich was a guerrilla leader accused of drug trafficking by the U.S.
Marquez’s whereabouts are currently unknown. He had left the Territorial Space for Training and Reintegration (ETCR) of Miravalle, in the department of Caqueta in the Southern Amazonas region of Colombia. Some ex-insurgents still remain there after the peace agreement was signed in 2016.
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