Free Republic

Colombia will pay a reward to a FARC guerrilla who shot dead his commander and cut off the man's hand to prove his identity in a case that sparked debate over a program to compensate informants, authorities said on Friday. Pablo Montoya, alias Rojas, killed Ivan Rios, one of the FARC's top seven secretariat commanders, and turned himself in to soldiers in what the government described as a serious blow to Latin America's oldest rebel insurgency. ... Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said the government would pay up to $2.5 million in bounty to Montoya and three others because of...

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombian security forces carrying out an arrest warrant Friday for a top rebel leader killed a man in a shootout, and were trying to confirm his identity, an official in the chief prosecutor's office said Friday. The raid targeted Ivan Rios, a member of the FARC guerrillas' ruling junta. If the body is identified as his, it would be the second member of the ruling secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to be killed in a week. That would be a huge blow to Latin America's oldest and strongest insurgency, shaken by the...