Rodrigo Granda, former FARC foreign minister, returned to Colombia after confusing retention in Mexico

Rodrigo Granda, one of the leaders and negotiators of the defunct FARC, surprisingly returned to Colombia on Wednesday after being held for a few hours in Mexico at the request of Paraguay, which seeks to prosecute him for murder and kidnapping despite the peace agreement with the former guerrilla.

The confusing case, with versions found between the parties, sparked a diplomatic controversy between Mexico and Paraguay.

The Comunes party, which emerged from the disarmament of the rebels, announced on Tuesday the capture of Granda before a “red circular” from Interpol that was activated when the ex-guerrilla was traveling to Mexico to participate in a political forum.

Paraguay reported that it processed the arrest request before Mexico, but the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador indicated in a bulletin that Granda returned to Colombia before it could consider the request.

“I want to know the explanation that the Mexican ambassador can give us,” Paraguayan Foreign Minister Euclides Acevedo said on Wednesday.

Upon his arrival in Bogotá, the FARC foreign minister, as Granda was known at the time of the conflict, affirmed that he “returned voluntarily” and denounced an alleged maneuver by the Colombian government to torpedo the peace process by capturing him.

“We are showing our faces, here I am,” said the 72-year-old ex-guerrilla when he arrived in the Colombian capital.

In 2008, a Paraguayan judge ordered his capture for his alleged connection with the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the daughter of former President Raúl Cubas, which occurred in 2005.

According to the investigation, the Paraguayan armed group that had it in their possession received instructions from the then Colombian rebels through Granda.

The leaders of the demobilized guerrilla are responding in freedom before the Special Justice of Peace (JEP) for crimes such as kidnapping and recruitment of minors, without having yet been convicted.

“I understand that this (peace) agreement is a kind of pardon within Colombia, but we have an arrest warrant (in Paraguay) and we are obliged to comply with it. We are going to make the maximum effort so that he is extradited and tried ”, highlighted Acevedo.

Granda traveled with the permission of the JEP and on his return asked that the process be included in the file that he has open in that court: “All my processes must be accumulated, including that of Paraguay,” he said.

Former guerrillas who confess their crimes and make amends to the victims will receive alternative sentences to prison. Otherwise, they will be exposed to penalties of up to 20 years.

Granda said that upon landing in Mexico he was notified that a “sleeping arrest warrant from Interpol” had been activated.

According to the ex-guerrilla, it was a maneuver by “very high officials of the Colombian government” against the peace agreement.

Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano denied that version by assuring on Tuesday that the “arrest” of the former negotiator of the agreement was at the request of Paraguay.

Rodrigo Londoño, president of Comunes who traveled with the ex-guerrilla, explained this Wednesday from Mexico that his partner was “isolated” and held incommunicado for “about seven or eight hours” before he decided to return to Colombia.

Granda, who in 2005 was arrested in Venezuela in a covert operation and later transferred to Colombia when he was working as an international liaison for the FARC, was one of the peace negotiators in Havana.

He was then released at the request of the French government to facilitate the release of Colombian-French Ingrid Betancourt, who was held by the FARC for six years before being rescued by the military in 2008.

Granda is the second leader of the demobilized guerrilla to be captured after signing the peace.

Seuxis Hernández Solarte, known as “Jesús Santrich”, was arrested in 2018 for extradition to the United States on drug trafficking charges that he always denied.

In 2019, he was released by order of the Supreme Court and later he rearmed himself together with former number two of the FARC, Iván Márquez, alleging breaches by President Iván Duque to the agreement.

According to versions that were not officially confirmed, Santrich died last May in an armed confrontation in Venezuela.

Granda’s arrest occurs just over a month after the fifth anniversary of the historic signed with President Juan Manuel Santos, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016.

During its long and unsuccessful struggle for power, the FARC resorted to kidnapping some 21,396 people for economic and political purposes. Its top commanders were indicted in January for crimes against humanity that occurred between 1990 and 2016.

“Our commitment to peace and what was agreed in Havana, Cuba, remains unshakable. Those who intend to destroy the Peace Agreement will not pass ”, noted Comunes in a bulletin. (I)