Americas

Home page

Americas

Colombia: top rebel trafficker slain

16 March 2011 04:31 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos says troops have killed a top FARC rebel who supplied Mexican traffickers with cocaine and managed finances and arms dealings for the guerrillasâ€™ powerful Southern Bloc, APA reports quoting news.yahoo.com website.

Santos told reporters that Olidem Romel Solarte Ceron, alias "Oliver Solarte," was killed Monday in a joint forces operation near San Miguel, a town bordering Ecuador.

The 39-year-old Solarte was wanted by the United States on drug trafficking charges.

His importance to Latin Americaâ€™s last surviving leftist rebel army was discovered in electronic messages found in computers belonging to Raul Reyes, the FARC leader Colombia killed in a cross-border raid into Ecuador in 2008 not far from where Solarte was said to have fallen.