Colombian rebel has ties to wealthy elite
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- The prosecution of a Colombian high society banker-turned-rebel has exposed a tangle of painful family connections in a country where the wealthy elite is tiny and almost everyone has been touched by war.
Simon Trinidad, one of the most important Colombian Marxist guerrillas ever caught, has pointed out he has family ties to both the attorney general and the inspector general, his lawyer Oscar Emilio Silva told local television this week.
Silva himself accepted the job of defending Trinidad despite the fact that his brother was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia two years ago, and has not been heard of since.
Trinidad, arrested in Ecuador last Friday, is the most senior member of the 17,000-strong guerrilla army, known by the Spanish initials FARC, ever captured.
While his exact rank in the organization is unclear, he was a prominent FARC negotiator in failed talks with the previous government and his arrest was a major victory for President Alvaro Uribe, who has boosted defense spending and set up networks of informers to hunt rebels.
A youthful friend of former President Andres Pastrana, Trinidad studied with a future finance minister and became a bank manager before running off to join the FARC in 1987. He once told Reuters he was outraged by the plight of the poor and disgusted by political assassinations of left-wing friends.
The 53-year-old, whose real name is Ricardo Palmera, is refusing to answer most questions during interrogation in the fortified concrete bunkers of the state prosecution service in Bogota.
"Once the formalities were over, he made a joke to those present that he had family ties to the attorney general and to the inspector general," Silva said.
The lawyer added: "My brother was detained by the FARC's 53rd front. But that didn't stop me taking on the defense."
One of the most serious of the 56 criminal charges brought against Trinidad is the killing of another relative of his, former Culture Minister Consuelo Araujonoguera.
Araujonoguera, who was the wife of one of Colombia's top legal officials, Inspector General Edgardo Maya, was kidnapped by the FARC in 2001 and shot in the back of the head when an army patrol closed in to rescue her.
In the past, Trinidad has said he regretted Araujonoguera's death and had nothing to do with it.
The rebel's niece is married to the son of Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio, who is a relentless foe of the FARC.
Thousands of people are killed in Colombia's conflict each year. The FARC say they are fighting for socialist reform in a country dominated by the sort of wealthy elite of which Trinidad was once a member, but their critics say they are more interested in drug smuggling and kidnapping for ransom.
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