Colombian rebel leader sentenced to 60 years over captured contractors

The contractors, employed by Northrop Grumman Corporation, were flying surveillance flights and relaying intelligence to the Colombian armed forces. They have been held by the guerrilla movement as prisoners of war.

No attempt was made by prosecutors to prove that Palmera had given the order to shoot down the spy plane or had anything to do with the contractors’ capture and detention. Indeed, all evidence indicates that he never laid eyes on the three. The sole basis of the charges was that he was a member of FARC, which the US State Department classified as a foreign terrorist organization under the Clinton administration, at a time when Washington stepped up its military intervention in Colombia and transformed its so-called “war on drugs” into an open counterinsurgency campaign, which Washington has funded to the tune of $5 billion.

The prosecution, conviction and sentencing of Palmera constitutes a significant escalation and broadening of the so-called “global war on terror,” which is now being utilized as a pretext for applying US law extraterritorially to suppress opponents of a US-backed regime in Latin America.