Bogota, May 3 (Inditop) A Colombian leftist guerrilla leader, suspected to be the head of the group’s urban networks, has been arrested from the southwestern city of Cali, the police have said.
Dorbey Collazos Gonzalez, best known as Sergio, was arrested Friday from a residential area in the city, the National Police News Agency (ANNP) said, adding that the rebel was preparing “terrorist acts”.
The agency said that Collazos, 45, active with the insurgents since 1999, was directing urban militias of the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Front of the country’s largest guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The arrested rebel leader was mostly involved in politics and ideology, an activity with which he helped build the group’s clandestine political party, the Bolivarian Movement for the New Colombia, the police agency said.
Collazos faces trial for rebellion and is accused of a recent attack with explosives on a police post in Cali.
Attacks by the FARC in Colombia’s largest cities used to be a frequent occurrence, but the country’s US-backed military has badly weakened the guerrillas in recent years and relegated them to remote jungle areas.
The FARC, which has battled a succession of Colombian governments since the mid-1960s, once had nearly 20,000 combatants, but is now estimated to number around 9,000.