Colombia’s Duque seeks action over FARC assassination confession

Colombia’s President Ivan Duque has called for two former FARC rebel commanders to be expelled from Congress over the 1995 assassination of a former presidential candidate. The former rebels last week admitted in a letter to the Justice for Peace court – set up to investigate crimes committed during the Colombian conflict – that they were responsible for the assassination of Alvaro Gomez, a Conservative Party leader and three-time presidential candidate. Gomez, 75, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen outside a university building in Bogota in 1995. Two of the signatories to the letter, former FARC commanders Julian Gallo and Pablo Catatumbo, sit in the Congress as part of the 2016 peace agreement that ended the nearly 60-year conflict. During an official event in Bogota, Duque said on Wednesday that given the seriousness of the crime, they “should immediately lose the connotation of being a member of Congress”. Duque, a sharp critic of the peace agreement, said the pair should resign voluntarily so as not to “re-victimise” Gomez’s family. style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; left: 0;">