Security & Strategic Review - March 2006

PARAGUAY | 'Farc connection' claimed anew. Officials have been claiming that the Colombian Farc guerrillas are helping rebuild the leftwing group accused of the kidnap and murder of Cecilia Cubas, daughter of former president Raúl Cubas, in late 2004. This followed the killing of a police officer, Oscar Noceda, on 8 February in an ambush in a remote township of Concepción, a northeastern department bordering on Brazil, shortly after he had taken part in the arrest of a group of people in possession of gunpowder and ammunition. The authorities did not claim explicitly that that had been a local insurgent group, but they did note that Noceda had taken part in two operations leading to the arrest of relatives of people prosecuted for two high-profile kidnappings, that of the wife of a prominent businessman in 2001, and that of Cecilia Cubas. The kidnappers in both cases belonged to a faction of the far-left Patria Libre (PL). On the strength of email communications between one of them and Rodrigo Granda, one of the Farc's leading international envoys, the prosecution in the Cubas case argued that the Farc had advised the PL on how to negotiate the ransom. After Noceda's killing, chief prosecutor Rubén Candia said that 'eloquent indications' had been found of the existence in the area of people or movements 'who do not have the slightest intention of contributing to the democratic system.' These 'indications', he said, suggested that an attempt was under way to 'rebuild' the group that had been disbanded after the Cubas kidnapping.

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