2023-07-07 18:39:48
Iván Márquez, the well-known leader of a FARC faction that returned to arms following a peace deal with the Colombian government, has died in Venezuela, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
Although most members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) demobilized under the 2016 deal that ended the FARC’s role in the country’s nearly 60-year conflict, two major groups reject it and, according to security forces , continued to participate in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
“The information provided by the group is that he died in a hospital in Caracas, where he received medical attention for serious injuries suffered in an attack in Venezuela at the end of June 2022,” said a source close to Segunda Marquetalia.
The attack against Márquez, whose real name was Luciano Marín Arango, may have been led by Iván Mordisco, leader of a dissident group rivaling the FARC, according to security sources.
Colombian Defense Minister Iván Velásquez told reporters that there was still no official information on Márquez’s death.
Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately respond to questions sent by Reuters.
Márquez was one of the negotiators of the agreement, but he abandoned it just two years later, in 2018, after his nephew was arrested and sent to the United States.
Later, Márquez emerged as the leader of the so-called Segunda Marquetalia, an ex-FARC group that took up arms again with some 1,670 members.
By Luis Jaime Acosta
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