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Former FARC hostage Betancourt announces fresh presidential bid

AFP

Ingrid Betancourt — who was abducted 20 years ago while campaigning for Colombia’s presidency, and held captive by FARC rebels in the jungle for more than six years — on Tuesday announced a new bid for the country’s top job.

The Franco-Colombian leader of the Oxygen Green Party told reporters in Bogota she would vie to become the nominee to represent centrist parties in the race.

If she wins the nomination, she will contest the first round presidential election on May 29.

“I will work tirelessly from this moment… to be your president,” she said.

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Betancourt, 60, was captured by the FARC guerilla group in 2002 while campaigning for the presidency, and was rescued in a military operation six-and-a-half years later, in 2008. 

She was chained for much of her captivity after she tried to escape.

The Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia (FARC) has been disarmed and disbanded under a 2016 peace pact that ended Colombia’s decades-long internal war, and has since converted itself into a minority political party.

“I am here today to finish what I started with many of you in 2002,” said Betancourt, who has mostly lived abroad since her liberation.

She added she was convinced “Colombia is ready to change course.”

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Betancourt presented herself as a centrist alternative to the right in power and the left led by former M-19 guerrilla and former Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro, a favorite in the polls.

“For decades, we have had only bad options: extreme right, extreme left,” she said.

“The moment has come to have a centrist option.”

She listed as objectives environmental protection and combating insecurity in a country with high rates of violence, and said she believed “in a world with a woman’s vision.”

Betancourt returned to public life in support of the peace process, confronting her captors last June for the first time since her ordeal in a meeting between victims and perpetrators arranged by Colombia’s Truth Commission.

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Colombia established the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), a tribunal to try the worst atrocities committed during the conflict.

Since 2017, it has charged former FARC commanders with the kidnapping of at least 21,000 people and the recruitment of 18,000 minors. 

The JEP hopes to deliver its first verdicts this year. It has the authority to offer alternatives to jail time to people who confess their crimes and make reparations.

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International

Trump urges Putin to reach peace deal

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his desire for Russian President Vladimir Putin to “reach a deal” to end the war in Ukraine, while also reaffirming his willingness to impose sanctions on Russia.

“I want to see him reach an agreement to prevent Russian, Ukrainian, and other people from dying,” Trump stated during a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House.

“I think he will. I don’t want to have to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil,” the Republican leader added, recalling that he had already taken similar measures against Venezuela by sanctioning buyers of the South American country’s crude oil.

Trump also reiterated his frustration over Ukraine’s resistance to an agreement that would allow the United States to exploit natural resources in the country—a condition he set in negotiations to end the war.

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International

Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links

A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.

Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.

However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.

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International

Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”

Guatemalan court decides Wednesday whether to convict journalist José Rubén Zamora

The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.

“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.

The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.

His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”

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