By DPA
Washington : A leader of the left radical outfit Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been sentenced to 60 years in prison in the US for his role in conspiring to abduct three US citizens.
The sentence Monday effectively means the 57-year-old Ricardo Palmera Pineda, known as Simon Trinidad, will spend the rest of his life locked up for the kidnappings of the three American contractors after their surveillance plane crashed in southern Colombia in 2003.
US prosecutors urged the judge to hand out a 60-year term instead of a life sentence in line with the 2004 extradition agreement with the Colombian government. Trinidad was sent to the US to face the charges after being arrested in Ecuador for using fake identification.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who imposed the sentence, said the hostage taking amounted to acts of terrorism and was “against the law of all civilized nations”.
The FARC, the largest leftist guerrilla group of Colombia, had demanded Trinidad’s release as part of any swapping of its hostages although Trinidad has said he was willing to be jailed in the US so as not to interfere with hostage release negotiations.
FARC holds hundreds of hostages, including the three Americans, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes.