Early Years
The FARC began to kidnap in the early 1970s to obtain ransoms and maintain their operations. During the government of President Ernesto Samper the FARC began to kidnap high profile government, political, military and law enforcement figures to push for the liberation of their comrades held in prisons by the government.
The FARC assaulted numerous villages and military garrisons and captured hundreds of military and police personnel, for example, John Frank Pinchao. Members of the government were also kidnapped ranging from senators like Jorge Gechem Turbay, presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, 12 Valle del Cauca Deputies, 3 U.S. contractors who were working with Plan Colombia, among other cases.
Read more about this topic: Humanitarian Exchange
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“An early dew woos the half-opened flowers”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“The Jew is neither a newcomer nor an alien in this country or on this continent; his Americanism is as original and ancient as that of any race or people with the exception of the American Indian and other aborigines. He came in the caravels of Columbus, and he knocked at the gates of New Amsterdam only thirty-five years after the Pilgrim Fathers stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock.”
—Oscar Solomon Straus (1850–1926)