What's new

Welcome

If you already have an account, please login, but if you don't have one yet, you are more than welcome to freely join the community of lawyers around the world..

Register Log in
  • We don't have any responsibilities about the news being sent in this site. Legal News are automatically being collected from sources and submitted in this forum by feed readers. Source of each news is set in the news and a link to its source is always added.
    (Any News older than 21 days from its post time will be deleted automatically!)

Jurist Colombia government secures release of kidnapping victims held by National Liberation Army

Status
Not open for further replies.
  • Thread starter
  • Staff
  • #1

Dadparvar

Staff member
Nov 11, 2016
10,595
0
6
The Peace Delegation of the Colombian Government announced the release of the 26 individuals who, until December 2023, had been reported and confirmed as victims of kidnapping with economic motives by Colombia’s self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (ELN). Through a statement, the ELN’s Central Command confirmed the release of each individual on Thursday, in compliance with the agreements established on February 26, 2024, with the Colombian government.

These releases occurred despite tensions surrounding the negotiations between the ELN and the Colombian government on February 20, when the ELN unilaterally decided to freeze the peace talks. The ELN claimed that the Colombian government had committed actions that violated the agreements at the negotiating table with the ELN delegation.

Despite these tensions, on February 26, the ELN announced on X (formerly Twitter) that negotiations with the Colombian government would continue their regular cycle in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela between April 8 and 22. In this regard, Vera Grabe, the chief negotiator for the Colombian government, emphasized that the two had to make commitments to continue with the negotiations and reach mutual agreements.

Originally, the ELN was a nationalist movement influenced by the Cuban revolution, focusing on kidnapping, extortion, and attacking oil infrastructure. Although it avoided drug trafficking for decades, in recent years the ELN has become deeply involved in the international drug trade. With over 5,000 members—including networks of militias infiltrated among the civilian population—the ELN operates between Colombia and Venezuela, with different objectives in each country. While in Colombia the ELN has waged an armed revolution against the state. In Venezuela it is more of a paramilitary force supporting the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

After holding peace negotiations with five different governments without reaching a final agreement, the ELN began official peace talks with the government of Colombian President Gustavo Petro in November 2022. This initiative is in line with the peace policy established by the Total Peace Law promoted by Petro. The law allows the government to negotiate peace agreements with organized armed groups operating outside the law to achieve a stable and lasting peace in the country, which has struggled with more than five decades of non-international armed conflict.

There is currently a ceasefire between the Columbian government and the ELN, which was just recently renewed on February 5. The agreement extended the existing ceasefire by 180 days. International Crisis Group commented that the six-month bilateral ceasefire, if successful, will mark the “longest bilateral ceasefire ever concluded with a guerrilla group.”

The post Colombia government secures release of kidnapping victims held by National Liberation Army appeared first on JURIST - News.

Continue reading...

Note: We don't have any responsibilities about this news. Its been posted here by Feed Reader and we had no controls and checking on it. And because News posted here will be deleted automatically after 21 days, threads are closed so that no one spend time to post and discuss here. You can always check the source and discuss in their site.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top