By IANS,
Miami : The military chief of Colombia’s largest rebel group is on the verge of death at a secret jungle hideout as he is unable to receive treatment for his chronic diabetes, EFE reported Friday.
Jorge Briceno Suarez, alias Mono Jojoy, the military chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is said to be suffering from chronic diabetes since past two years, but his health deteriorated recently, the report said.
“He’s nothing but bones … he doesn’t have food or medicine and his people have to carry him whenever they have to move him to another camp,” the report quoted a Spanish daily as saying.
The FARC’s former top leader and founder, Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, died after a heart attack last March, just weeks after another top member of the group, Raul Reyes, was killed in a cross-border military air raid in Ecuador.
The report said huge quantity of weapons and millions of dollars under Suarez’s control are kept hidden in the jungle.
Last year, the government soldiers had rescued former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three US military contractors, among others from FARC’s custody. Most of them had been held fore more than five years.