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The three battles of Facundo Molares, the former Argentine FARC guerrilla

2022-04-23T01:32:56.699Z


After 15 years in the jungle, he laid down his arms in the middle of the peace process. He reappeared in Bolivia and his return to Argentina became a matter of state. Now, he faces an extradition trial to Colombia


The former FARC guerrilla Facundo Molares Schoefeld in the Colombian jungle.RR.SS.

On October 30, 2019, while the protests against Evo Morales drowned Bolivia, the first deaths of the 38 that occurred during the 10 days that ended with the exile of the former president in Mexico were reported.

In the city of Montero, on the outskirts of the opposition's eastern stronghold in the city of Santa Cruz, two men who opposed Morales' re-election died from the impact of bullets.

Night had already fallen.

The opposition had blocked the entrances to the city and both protesters were killed after a whole day of clashes between supporters and opponents of the former president.

In addition to the dead, the riots in Montero left 21 wounded.

One of them was a former member of the extinct Colombian guerrilla group the FARC.

Facundo Molares Schoefeld (Buenos Aires, 46 years old) was admitted to a hospital in the city of Santa Cruz when he was recognized by the police on November 11, 2019.

He spent at least 25 days in an induced coma, with "injuries consistent with multiple pellet-type firearm projectiles," according to a report by the Organization of American States.

When he woke up, the Bolivian Prosecutor's Office locked him up in a maximum security prison.

He accused him of the murder of Marcelo Terrazas, 48, and Mario Salvatierra, 54, the two dead on that fateful night in Montero.

Molares spent almost a year in prison.

At that time, the interim government of Jeanine Áñez killed civilians, suppressed protests and, finally, resigned from running in the elections in which Evo Morales' party returned to power.

Molares' return to Argentina then became a matter of state: on December 6, 2020, the former guerrilla flew to Buenos Aires on a plane sent by the government of Alberto Fernández.

But the calm lasted less than a year for Molares.

On November 7, Argentine police arrested him in Trevelin, a small tourist town in Patagonia, following a red alert from Interpol.

The request had come from Colombia, a country that wants to try Molares for the kidnapping of councilman Armando Acuña, which occurred on May 29, 2009 in an area that was then under the control of the FARC.

This week, a judge in Buenos Aires began the process that will decide whether or not Argentina accepts the extradition of the former guerrilla.

Facundo Molares is detained by the Argentine Federal Police after a red alert from Interpol, in November 2021.@FernandezAnibal (RR.SS.)

El Argentino, as he was called in the FARC, had arrived in the Colombian jungle in 2002, according to intelligence information leaked to the Colombian press.

After receiving military training, he ended up in the Teófilo Forero column, one of the bloodiest structures of the insurgency, responsible for attacks such as the car bomb that destroyed the El Nogal club in Bogotá, in which 36 people died.

Facundo Molares gained the trust of Hernán Darío Velásquez, alias El Paisa, the bloodthirsty commander of the group.

At first, El Paisa joined the peace process that began in Colombia in 2016, but later took up arms and joined the Second Marquetalia, the dissidents led by Iván Márquez.

In December he died on the other side of the border with Venezuela in a confused ambush.

Molares had distanced himself from the rebel leaders.

A brief statement from the political party that emerged from the FARC in November 2019 points to a "disruption of coexistence due to his strong temperament and his reluctance to the peace process", for which they allowed him to go "home".

"Facundo left Colombia at the end of 2017, beginning of 2018, after spending a year in one of the camps where the FARC were going through demobilization after the peace process," Gustavo Farquet, one of the defense lawyers, told EL PAÍS. de Molares in the extradition trial in Argentina.

Sources from the political party of the extinct guerrilla told this newspaper that El Argentino stayed until the end of the peace process, but did not sign the agreement.

According to the office of the High Commissioner for Peace,

he was not certified as a member of the FARC in the reincorporation process.

After his departure, the extinct guerrilla lost track of him.

According to the lawyer Farquet, Molares had returned to Argentina more or less at the end of 2017, after a trip by land that took him to Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.

He “he learned carpentry in the FARC, he built cribs for babies, but he didn't want to stay in Colombia as a carpenter.

He discovered that his vocation was journalism”, affirms the lawyer.

Mónica Glomba, who defines herself as his militancy partner “since Facundo was 14 years old,” says that on his return to the country he began to write for Centenario magazine, a left-wing publication.

“He traveled to Bolivia to cover Evo's re-election.

He was ideal: he knew the country, the militancy and knew how to handle himself.

He also knew that things were going to get complicated, ”he says in a telephone conversation.

“He made notes of a political nature.

He signed them under the name of Julián Katari”, he says.

Julián Katari has only two publications on the magazine's website.

In an interview with the Russia Today portal, the director of the outlet, Leonardo Juárez, explains that Molares did not write anything about Bolivia because he was imprisoned in poor conditions.

“The presence of a person with military training is not casual,” local police chief Óscar Gutiérrez said at the time.

"She has been hired and we are going to investigate that."

Áñez's government sought to blame Molares for Montero's deaths to defend the thesis that Evo Morales had created a paramilitary group to defend his presidency.

When Luis Arce, former Minister of Economy of Evo Morales, became president in November 2020, the Government of Alberto Fernández asked him personally to intercede in the repatriation of the former guerrilla.

“The case in Bolivia was closed, and when Argentina requests repatriation, the Bolivian government requests information from Colombia, without finding anything,” says Mónica Gomba.

"Facundo had covid twice, he has an almost complete loss of visibility in his right eye and suffers from pericarditis that decreases his breathing capacity," she says.

“He is completely unattended.

The extradition request is almost a death sentence, but Facundo has seven lives.”

Several foreigners have joined the ranks of the Colombian guerrilla movements.

Manuel El Cura Pérez, a former Spanish priest who died of hepatitis in 1998 while being the top leader of the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Dutch Tanja Nijmeijer, the European member of the FARC, are the best known cases.

Months after the signing of the peace agreement, sealed at the end of 2016, a census of the National University registered 84 foreign guerrillas.

The vast majority were Venezuelans (54), Ecuadorians (16) and Brazilians (8), countries that share borders with Colombia, but there were also Dutch (Nijmeijer), France, Chile and, precisely, Argentina on behalf of Molares.

Whether or not Molares adheres to the peace agreement will determine how he will be judged in Colombia, if he is extradited.

Lawyer Farquet hopes that the matter will be resolved by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, which contemplates amnesty for the signatories of the treaty.

But if he did not sign it, the ordinary court that claims Molares today can proceed on his behalf.

Farquet maintains that his client did sign the agreement, but since he does not have a Colombian document.

"The commissioner says that he has no way to prove if he is the same Facundo Molares," he maintains.

“The accusation has a political reason.

According to a principle of equality, he should be part of the amnesty.

That they don't know it is a detail,

but they are not unaware that he was in the camp and the commissioner told the prosecution that there was a person on the list named Facundo Molares.

He obviously has no document because he is Argentine.”

After 15 years in the Colombian jungle, one in prison in Bolivia and a trip on a private flight that ended in five months in another prison in Argentina, Molares is preparing his latest attack.

This time, El Argentino needs a good defense.

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Source: elparis

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