They assassinate a former FARC combatant who was about to present his brand of chocolate

Juan de Jesús Monroy Ayala, known as Albeiro Suárez, was shot in the rural area of ​​La Uribe (Meta) where one of his bodyguards was also killed. Two months ago he reported threats to the JEP of neo-paramilitary groups that appeared in that region of Meta.

El Espectador was able to establish that, along with Albeiro Suárez, the name he used in his years as a combatant, one of his bodyguards, Jeferson Mandela, who was a former guerrilla and attached to the National Protection Unit (UNP), was assassinated.

It was known that until the afternoon of this Friday the bodies were still at the scene of the crime, close to the cocoa production project that he led.

Monroy Ayala was close to presenting a brand of chocolate from the cooperative of 60 ex-guerrillas that he led in the inspection of La Julio, in the municipality of Uribe, one more step for the growth of peace that he was in charge of.

The ex-guerrilla was recognized in the region because he was part of the personal guard of the founder and maximum leader of the Farc, Manuel Marulanda Vélez.

Monroy arrived in La Julia in 2018 from the Colinas (Guaviare) reincorporation space, where 582 ex-guerrillas left their arms. There he leased a 36-hectare piece of land where he had grown cassava, banana, onion, aromatic herbs, some heads of cattle, chickens and pigs; Thanks to the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Government of Sweden.

On another piece of land, he was able to build a nursery where he grew 500 cocoa seedlings and another 500 with species for reforestation, in development of a project framed in the National Plan for the Substitution of Crops for Illicit Use.

The ex-guerrilla had already revealed problems in the area before the Special Justice for Peace (JEP), because in a hearing, precisely for that court to evaluate the safety of the ex-guerrillas, it denounced “the increase in the presence of paramilitaries in the territory and the control they exercise in Villavicencio, Granada, Guamal, Acacías, Puerto Lleras, Puerto Rico , Mapiripán and now in Vista Hermosa, mainly in the villages where coca is being eradicated. “

Carlos Ruiz Massieu, head of the UN Verification Mission in Colombia, assured on October 14, in the last report of this mission that it monitors the implementation of the peace agreement in the country, that it is necessary to bring to justice those responsible for the “multiple murders that have taken place in recent months” and emphasized their support for the Special Justice for Peace (JEP).

“The incessant violence against ex-combatants continues to affect the reincorporation process and, more generally, the consolidation of peace, as evidenced by the relocation of ex-combatants and their families from former territorial training and reincorporation spaces in Antioquia and Cauca and the continuing exit of ex-combatants from other old territorial spaces and from new areas of reincorporation ”, warns the document

Ruiz Massieu emphasized that in the following months, emphasis should be placed on consolidating the old territorial spaces for training and reintegration and better supporting ex-combatants living outside of them.

“We are halfway through the two-year transition period for the consolidation of the old territorial spaces for training and reincorporation, in which the formalization and titling of land will help reduce uncertainty and pave the way towards long-term prospects. for thousands of ex-combatants and their families ”, can be read in the report, which covers the period from June 27 to September 25, 2020.