The FARC on Trial: Simon Trinidad as Representative
Ricardo Palmera, a Colombian guerrilla better known as Simón Trinidad, is on trial in Washington D.C. for hostage-taking, and related charges of conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and providing material support to a terrorist organization. Trinidad is well-known in Colombia for his role as a negotiator for the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), a marxist guerrilla army that has battled the Colombian government for more than 40 years.
The charges stem from an incident on Feb 13, 2004, in which a Cessna 208 surveillance aircraft crashed in a FARC-controlled region of the Colombian jungle. After the crash, and the execution of two occupants of the plane, the FARC took three other occupants captive, and have held them ever since, along with about 60 Colombian police, military, and political figures they are holding somewhere in the dense Colombian jungle. The three Americans were employed by California Microwave Systems, a US military contractor. The FARC consider them to be prisoners of war.
Just a few months after the crash, Simón Trinidad was apparently sent by the FARC leadership to Quito, Ecuador, to meet with James Lemoyne, Kofi Annan's special representative for Colombia-FARC negotiations. The meeting was not to be. Trinidad was tracked by Colombian and US authorities and arrested by the Ecuadorans shortly after arrival. There he stated that he was a member of the FARC on a humanitarian mission to discuss the exchange of prisoners, and asked for the protection of the Ecuadoran government. He was shortly sent to Colombia, interrogated by the FBI, and then extradited to the US to face crimnal hostage-taking charges stemming from the Cessna incident.
It's conceded that Simón Trinidad has been a member of the FARC since 1987, working in the Carribean Bloc in the northwest of the country. It is not alleged, however, that Trinidad had any involvement in the Cessna incident itself. He did not give the order to shoot down this plane, and was not involved in the decision to take the Americans as prisoners. It appears that Trinidad's only involvement was to travel to Ecuador to attempt to lay the groundwork for talks on their release.
Although the Colombian government has successfully entered into negotiations with another guerrilla organization, the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), and with the right-wing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), no progress has been made during the administration of President Alvaro Uribe with respect to the FARC. The Colombian government has in principle agreed to negotiations under the auspices of three friendly countries, Switzerland, France and Sweden, but its position has been that a prisoner exchange would only be part of broader talks on demobilizing the FARC. Public pressure, however, forced the Colombian government to raise the issue of a separate humanitarian exchange with the FARC. The FARC responded by stating its terms for the exchange, which include the creation of a small demilitarized zone, which would be limited in duration to what would be required to exchange the prisoners.
The issue of a prisoner exchange has loomed in the background of peace negotiations since at least 1998, when Andres Pastrana was elected President of Colombia with promises of ending the war with the guerrillas. Although Pastrana's experiment, granting the FARC a large demilitarized zone to rule as their own, ultimately ended in failure, the prisoner exchange issue has survived. In 2003, the FARC released hundreds of captives in exchange for a dozen FARC members held in Colombian prisons. Although US and Colombian officials are quick to term the prisoners as "criminals" and "hostages", respectively, the reality is that both sides consider them canjeable - a Spanish word meaning exchangable.
With the capture of the three Americans, and their inclusion on the list of canjeables, all this would come to an end. Trinidad's mission to Ecuador would be met with his arrest, and extradition to the US for hostage-taking. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe gave the FARC an ultimatum: release all the prisoners, including the three Americans, or face extradition to the dreaded north of America, where the harsh treatment of terrorist suspects has become legendary. The ultimatum went unanswered, and Trinidad was flown to Washington DC aboard John Ashcroft's private jet, with an entourage of FBI agents and heavily-armed guards.
The possibility of a canje, with Trinidad himself part of the exchange, came to an abrupt end last week, one week after Trinidad's trial began, when a car bomb injured 20 people inside the military academy in Bogotá. President Uribe not only called off negotiations with the FARC, but also announced that the Colombian military would undertake a mission to rescue the 60 prisoners held by the FARC. The announcement drew little support in Colombia, particularly among the prisoners' family members. Nicholas Burns of the U.S. State Department quickly arrived, announcing US support for a rescue attempt. Whatever the fate of the prisoners may be, negotiations with the FARC have hit an impasse.
Breaking New Legal Ground
