TerrorismLeaders of Colombia ELN rebel groups investigated for 16,000 war crimes

Published 13 May 2016

The office of Colombia’s attorney general said it was investigating five top leaders of the country’s ELN guerrilla group for nearly 16,000 war crimes and crimes against humanity. The allegations come amid heightened tensions between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the government. The ELN is a sister organization of the much larger FARC, both Marxist guerrilla movements which bhave been operating in the mountainous jungles of southern Colombia since the early 1960s.

The office of Colombia’s attorney general said it was investigating five top leaders of the country’s ELN guerrilla group for nearly 16,000 war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Telegraph reports that the allegations come amid heightened tensions between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the government. The ELN is a Marxist guerrilla movement has been operating in the mountainous jungles of southern Colombia since the early 1960s. It smaller and less influential than the FARC, a well-organized insurgency controlling an area the size of Switzerland in the middle of Colombia. The FARC and the Colombian government have been conducting peace negotiations in Havana since 2012, and an agreement to end the war between them is imminent.

The government and ELN announced in March that they would begin formal peace talks to end the 50-year war, but ELN fighters have kept up their kidnappings for ransom and attacks on the country’s oil infrastructure.

The Colombian government said that ELN top leader Nicolas Rodriguez Bautista, who goes by his nom de guerre, Gabino, and four other high-level rebels are the focus of the investigations.

The list of 15,896 crimes in which the five ELN leaders are implicated include murders, kidnappings, forced recruitment, displacement, bombing, and more.

We are investigating the origin, evolution, expansion, policies and strategies of the ELN, their structures and those chiefly responsible for crimes of war and against humanity committed during the conflict,” Attorney General Jorge Fernando Perdomo said.

The ELN was founded by radical Catholic priests in 1964, who were inspired by Cuba’s 1959 revolution. Unlike its sister organization, the FARC, the ELN was not as close to Cuba and, during the cold war, to the Soviet Union. The group has often targeted pipelines and other installations related to Colombia’s oil industry.