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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The former chief peace negotiator for Colombia's FARC rebel movement has decided to relocate to a rural camp for ex-guerrillas amid speculation he could soon be arrested as part of a U.S. drug investigation.
The rebel leader known as Ivan Marquez alerted the Colombian government of his plans in a letter Thursday. He said he was resettling temporarily in a rebel transition zone in his native Caqueta province "until there is more clarity and certainty about what comes next."
Marquez didn't specify what he meant but said he remains committed to the 2016 peace deal that saw almost 7,000 guerrillas turn over their weapons and form a political movement.
Earlier this month, Colombian authorities arrested a top FARC ideologue known by the alias Jesus Santrich on U.S. charges of conspiring to smuggle 10 tons of cocaine into the U.S. in cahoots with Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. The arrest made Santrich the first high-ranking leader in the peace process to be charged with criminal activity, unsettling rank and file rebels already concerned about the slow pace of implementation of the historic accord.
Also arrested in the U.S.-led sting was Marquez's nephew, Marlon Marin, who has since been taken to New York and is cooperating with prosecutors overseeing the case.
Marquez has suggested he could be captured next and has accused the U.S. and Colombia of orchestrating the arrests to sabotage the peace process.
"They took the first one away already," Marquez told a group of former rebels on April 12. "And Santrich told me 'Ivan, you'll be next.'"
For now, Colombia's government is trying to downplay speculation surrounding Marquez's surprise decision to abandon the capital, where he had been living for the past year.
Interior Minister Guillermo Rivera said Marquez told him that he wanted to engage with some of the 7,000 former fighters living in the rural camps.
"We're not alarmed by Ivan Marquez's presence in the Miravalle zone," Rivera told Blu Radio. "This is part of what he and other leaders of the FARC's political party normally do."
Under terms of the accord aimed at ending Latin America's longest-running conflict, rebels who lay down their weapons and confess their war crimes to special peace tribunals are to be spared jail time and extradition. But they aren't protected for crimes committed after the December 2016 signing.
Santrich has been carrying out a hunger strike from jail that is now in its 12th day in protest of what he considers his unjust detention.
On Thursday, the nation's ombudsman said that a medical exam showed him to be weak but in good mental condition.
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