The United States must remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The information was revealed by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed to Reuters by two sources.
According to the news agency, the US State Department notified Congress on Tuesday (23) about the plan to withdraw the communist group from the list, and an official announcement should be made in the next few days.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday that more details would be forthcoming, but declined to confirm whether this meant removing the FARC from the list of terrorist organizations.
The group was first designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 1997. After a peace agreement with the Colombian government five years ago, it was negotiated with the help of then-US President Barack Obama – to whom current President Joe Biden was deputy -, the ex-guerrillas entered politics, later renaming the group of Comunes and obtaining ten seats in the Colombian Congress.
A report released by Colombia’s National Historical Memory Center in 2018 found that more than 260,000 people died in the country during nearly 60 years of armed conflict, about 215,000 of them civilians. Paramilitary groups fighting guerrillas were reportedly responsible for 94,754 deaths, guerrillas 35,683 and security forces 9,804.
A 2019 military intelligence report revealed that about a third of FARC fighters had returned to taking up arms after the 2016 peace agreement.
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