Spain's FARC commander held

2008-07-26 23:53

Madrid - Spanish police said on Saturday they had arrested a 57-year-old woman they claim is the leader of the Spanish cell of Colombian Marxist rebel group FARC.

Maria Remedios Garcia Albert was arrested at her home in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, northeast of Madrid, they said.

The Interior Ministry said Garcia Albert had provided logistical support for FARC and had direct contacts with Raul Reyes, the FARC number two who was killed by Colombian troops inside Ecuador earlier this year.

Analysis of Reyes' computer passed on to Spanish investigators by Colombian authorities had led them to identify Garcia Albert.

Garcia Albert travelled to secret camps in Colombia last year for "meetings with top leaders of the terrorist group", according to the Interior Ministry.

Money

She was discovered in possession of "several amounts of money" which she was preparing to send to representatives of FARC in Europe, the ministry said in a statement.

In Bogota, the director of the national police force General Oscar Naranjo welcomed the arrest as an important breakthrough in the investigation of the FARC's links with Europe.

He said Reyes' computer files contained "a significant number of names of people living abroad, some of them Europeans and others Colombian".

The FARC, Latin America's oldest and largest insurgency, have been seeking to topple the government since the 1960s.

Despite the recent rescue of Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and several others, they are estimated to hold more than 700 hostages for ransom or as political bargaining chips.

- AFP