They offer $ 50 million in reward for information on the homicide of a former FARC combatant and his sister

The news of the murder of Yolanda Zabala Mazo, a former FARC combatant who accepted the peace agreements between the defunct guerrilla and the National Government, and her 17-year-old sister Reina Zabala Mazo provoked reactions from human rights organizations such as Indepaz, the FARC party and even the Colombian authorities, who met on the afternoon of this Saturday, January 2 to discuss the events.

After an extraordinary security council held in Briceño Antioquia, where the events took place, and in which the Secretary of Security of the Interior of said department, the local authorities and General Juvenal Diaz, commander of the Army’s Seventh Division participated, It was determined that $ 50 million will be offered as a reward to those who offer information that allows the capture of the material authors of the deaths of the Zabala sisters

In an official statement, the National Army expressed its deep condolences to the family of the former combatant and reported that “The General Directorate of the National Police ordered an investigation team of the Elite Corps attached to the Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Interpol to directly advance the investigation of these events “. With this, and with the help of the civil authorities, it is hoped to reinforce the search and capture of alias Cabuyo, leader of the armed group Structure 36, who commits a crime in the jurisdiction of the municipality of Briceño.

Likewise, recommendations were issued to expedite “the projects that have been presented by the municipal administration to the Antioquia Government and the National Government, especially road interventions and the implementation of productive projects, which would close the doors to criminal economies ”.

All these actions will be under the constant surveillance of the attorney’s office delegated for the follow-up of the peace agreement, which must ensure compliance with them.

The events took the Briceño community by surprise, because as explained by Duván Jaramillo, spokesperson for the FARC in the department of Antioquia, this is the first homicide of a former combatant in said territory since the peace accords were signed.

Regarding the event, personalities from the political sphere also raised their voices, such as the senator for the Green Party Antonio Sanguino, who, according to Caracol Radio, stated that “the lives of the signatories of the peace agreement and social leaders continue to be in danger in Colombia in 2021, the government of President Duque continues to reveal itself as incapable of guaranteeing the right to life of Colombians ”.

The current situation was also condemned by senators such as Roy Barreras, Aida Avella, Feliciano Valencia, Sandra Ramírez and the representative Angela Maria Robledo.

The Institute of Studies for Development and Peace, Indepaz, warned this Friday afternoon about the assassination of Yolanda Zabala Mazo, former FARC combatant who had accepted the reintegration process after the signing of the Peace Agreement in 2016, and his sister, Reina Zabala Mazo, during the New Year celebrations in Colombia.

According to the organization, “the events took place around 4:00 am, when Armed men entered his home, located in the Travesías village, Briceño municipality, there they kidnapped the signatory and her sister, a minor – 17 years old – and later murdered ”.

Yolanda Zabala Mazo, 22, was known as ‘Liliana Estrada’ during her time in the armed group, as part of the reintegration process that is being carried out in the Territorial Space for Training and Reincorporation (Etcr) of La Plancha, in the municipality of Anorí, Antioquia And, reports the newspaper El Espectador, she had been pardoned in 2017, thanks to Decree 1096.

According to preliminary information released by the same publication, this was not the first time that the former combatant was the victim of an attack. Another had already lived in August 2019, when, in the department of Cauca, he found, along with his sentimental partner, in the middle of an armed confrontation between FARC dissidents and members of the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Agc).

In this attack, which left two people dead, was injured by shrapnel from an explosive device, which forced her to go to a medical center to receive care, reported the Colombia 2020 unit of the newspaper.

The representative to the House for the Farc Party, and former commander of the 36th Front of the extinct guerrilla, Omar de Jesús Restrepo Correa, described the murder of the Zabala Like a painful way to start the year

It is not the first time that the congressman reports the violent acts that are taking place in the country against reinstated ex-combatants. In fact, he did it three times in the last week, with the murders of Rosa Amalia Mendoza Trujillo and Manuel Alonso, known by the aliases of ‘Romel’ and ‘Carmelo’ during the times of the armed conflict.

About the first, 25-year-old, Restrepo reported that died on December 26 during the Quebrada Honda Massacre, municipality of Montecristo, Bolívar, where four other people lost their lives, including his two-year-old daughter. She was a founding member of Asovisbol, the Asociación de Vivienda Agraria y Ambiental del Sur de Bolívar, as well as a member of an unspecified indigenous community. The second, the representative added, was 55 years old and was found dead on December 27 in Miranda, Cauca, without further explanation.

In a statement published on the occasion of the end of the year, the Farc Party had warned that despite “the long list of assassinations of former guerrillas and their families,” they continued to bet on peace in an irreversible way. On today’s news, they said through their Twitter account, that “State breaches continue to be the pillars of this extermination. It hurts in the soul “.

With Yolanda, 250 ex-combatants who signed the agreements have already been assassinated, 64 of them in 2020. Other figures from the institute reveal that in the country there have been 1,107 murders of social leaders, 309 of them during the year that has just ended; 90 massacres that left 375 victims in the last 365 days, a period in which 78 murders committed at the hands of the public forces were also recorded.

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