Bogotá (EFE).- The Colombian Defense Minister, Iván Velásquez, said that for the moment “there is no confirmation” about the alleged death of “Iván Márquez”, top leader of the Second Marquetalia, one of the FARC dissidents , adding that the authorities are trying to verify that information.
“There is no confirmation, we are with the verifications (…) We are attentive so that, when we have confirmed a news of this nature, we will inform,” the minister told reporters.
The CM& newscast reported today that Iván Márquez, who was the FARC’s chief negotiator in the talks that led to the signing of the November 2016 peace agreement, died as a result of serious injuries sustained in an attack on him in July last year in Venezuela.
In this sense, the minister indicated that the Colombian security forces are working on the verification and asked for prudence until “there is a verification” that allows them to “speak properly.”
The latest information that the authorities have about him, according to the head of the Defense portfolio, is that “at some point he was in the national territory” after the attack he suffered in July and “he was healthy.”
History of alias “Iván Márquez”
In August 2019, almost three years after signing the peace, Luciano Marín Arango, alias “Iván Márquez”, who was also number two in the FARC, announced that he was taking up arms again at the head of a dissidence called Segunda Marquetalia, in reference to to the birthplace of the FARC more than half a century ago, for alleged breaches by the Government of what was agreed.
Last year his alleged death was reported in an attack perpetrated by criminal gangs with which the Segunda Marquetalia was fighting for control of drug trafficking on the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
However, that dissidence blamed the attack on the Colombian security forces and denied the death, and last September the Colombian government confirmed that Márquez was alive, but “sick, convalescent.”
Luciano Marín Arango, 68, was born on June 16, 1955 in Florencia, capital of the southern department of Caquetá, and his record indicates that in the early 1980s he was linked to the FARC’s 14th Front, where he rose through the ranks to become part of the guerrilla leadership.