Those arrested would be in charge of collecting money from illicit activities, forced recruitment and criminal intelligence activities to the troops through the use of drones, under the criminal command of alias Jimmi, the alleged ringleader of this substructure.
The Colombian Navy, within the framework of a joint, coordinated and inter-institutional operation with Colombian National Army, the Colombian Aerospace Force, the National Police and the Attorney General's Office, arrested three alleged members of Substructure 44 Antonio Ricaurte of the Manuel Marulanda Vélez Amazonas Bloc, belonging to the so-called Central Staff of the FARC dissidents in the departments of Guaviare and Meta.
Thanks to a detailed and powerful intelligence work, it was possible to find and arrest alias JJ or Umaña, alias Gordo Zapata and alias Telmo, in the urban area of the municipalities of San José del Guaviare and Villavicencio. These individuals had arrest warrants in force, issued by the Prosecutor's Office 190 of the Specialized Directorate Against Criminal Organizations, for the alleged crimes of association to commit crimes for the purposes of extortion and forced recruitment.
According to the investigations, those arrested would be involved in extortion activities from merchants, forced recruitment of minors and criminal surveillance of military units conducted in rural areas, especially in riverside areas of the Guaviare River. These criminal intelligence tasks would have been carried out with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), which demonstrates a growing threat, about the indiscriminate use of this type of devices, to generate terror in the territories victims of the conflict.
During the procedure, a drone was found, it would cost fifteen million pesos, which, according to preliminary information, would have been used to track troops movements on the ground and plan terrorist attacks against the Military Forces, putting at risk not only military personnel, but in the same way communities living in rural areas.
The finding of this aerial operation represents a strategic blow to the technological resources of the criminal structures in this region of the country, which have intensified the use of these means to obtain advantages of the military operation against the Military Forces.
The arrested and the material were put into custody of the authorities. The individuals received an order of imprisonment.
Source: Press- Navy of Colombia
