Court gives FARC leaders jail sentences

A Colombian court has given 40-year jail sentences to two top leaders of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), of which one is a negotiator in the peace process with the country’s government.

The Criminal Court of Villavicencio City found on Monday Rodrigo Londono and Luciano Marin guilty of terrorism, rebellion and murder committed in 2003.

The two FARC leaders were not present when the verdict was read instead they are currently in Havana, Cuba, where the peace negotiations have taken place during the past six months to end the five-decade armed conflict.

Timoshenko said from Havana that neither FARC is willing to surrender their weapons nor their members are willing to serve jail sentences in a possible post-conflict situation.

The court also sentenced 20 other FARC members jail terms as well as ordered them to pay fines for bombing a boat on the Ariari River that left four dead and 30 others injured.

FARC is Latin America’s oldest insurgent group as it began fighting the Colombian government in 1964.

Bogota estimates that 600,000 people have been killed, and some three million others have been internally displaced by the fighting.

The rebel organization is thought to have around 8,000 fighters operating across a large swathe of the eastern jungles of the Andean nation.