Guerrilla leader traveled openly - FARC leader Rodrigo Granda lived under own name in Venezuela

Miami Herald ^ | Aug. 07, 2005 | STEVEN DUDLEY

[Tailgunner Joe]

COMBITA, Colombia - A guerrilla leader whose capture in neighboring Venezuela sparked a bitter diplomatic row says he was a political envoy who maintained regular relations with foreign ministers and other officials in Latin America, Europe and Africa.

In his first media interview since his arrest last year, Rodrigo Granda, who went on trial this week on charges of rebellion, denied police allegations that he was also involved in bomb-making, arms trafficking and kidnapping.

Granda is being held in the maximum security wing of the prison here in the windswept mountains of central Colombia, along with a handful of high-profile guerrillas, drug traffickers, and paramilitaries.

He has scotch-taped birthday cards and fan mail on his cell wall. He is decidedly thinner than when he was arrested, but told The Herald he has been treated ``as well as you can expect from the enemy.''

Still, the 56-year-old bespectacled rebel from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, seems to have little fear of the future, perhaps because of his long experience dodging the law -- and death.

He says he survived three assassination attempts in 1987 as a leader in the Patriotic Union, a political party created by the FARC, the country's biggest and oldest leftist guerrilla group, during a peace process that eventually failed.

INTERNATIONAL ENVOY

And as a longtime member of the FARC's so-called International Committee, Granda has slipped past security systems for decades -- mostly using his real name, he claimed -- to establish friendly relations with foreign nations and leftist political and social movements.

He never carried a false passport, Granda said, even while traveling to dozens of countries to introduce himself to government officials and others. His only security precautions were not carrying his legitimate travel documents within countries, and using the alias ''Ricardo'' when meeting with foreign officials.

Granda said he maintained regular relations with foreign ministers, ambassadors, and government officials worldwide, but declined to identify them. He said he was in France as recently as 2002, where he met with European Union leaders.

''They have to protect their interests so nothing happens to their citizens and their economic interests,'' he said of the foreign governments, referring to his belief that the rebels will one day govern Colombia. The FARC regularly extorts protection payments from businesses and kidnaps for ransom.

Granda would not say whether he'd met with U.S. government officials. But in 1999 FARC envoys met secretly in Costa Rica with Phillip Chicola, then director of the U.S. State Department's Andean affairs office, as the Clinton administration sought to explore the rebels' commitment to peace talks with then-President Andrés Pastrana.

The FARC is known to have emissaries like Granda posted throughout Europe and Latin America, and his life in Caracas illustrates the comfort level with which he performed his duties.

Under his own name, he rented a house, attended conferences and met openly with journalists and supporters of leftist President Hugo Chávez. He even obtained Venezuelan citizenship, though officials there claim that he used false documents to do that.

BOUNTY HUNTERS

So when four men in plainclothes grabbed him outside a Caracas cafe on the afternoon of Dec. 13 and threw him in the back of a SUV, he didn't hesitate to truthfully identify himself.

Granda said he was then shuttled from vehicle to vehicle until he was delivered the next morning to police in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta. They offered to send him and his family ''anywhere in the world'' if he became an informant, he said, then arrested him when he declined.

After initially denying that Granda had been captured in Venezuela, Colombian authorities admitted to paying bounty hunters in Caracas,

Venezuela briefly recalled its ambassador and broke off economic relations before overtures by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe shored up the rift. Four Venezuelan National Guardsmen are awaiting trial for participating in the capture.

Tension remains between the two countries, in part because of Granda's stay in Venezuela.

Chávez has expressed sympathy for the ideals of the FARC and other leftist groups, but denied that he supports them with money or weapons.

Paraguayan and Colombian authorities also claim they have hard evidence linking him to the kidnapping of Cecilia Cubas, the daughter of former Paraguayan President Raúl Cubas, by a Paraguayan leftist group.

Granda said he was confident he would leave the Combita prison when the Colombian government and the FARC reach an agreement to swap rebel prisoners for Colombian soldiers, as well as three defense department contractors captured by the FARC in 2003.