Colombia’s police said Saturday that guerrilla group FARC has kidnapped two policemen in the southwestern Valle del Cauca department.
The alleged kidnapping took place on Friday, the same day President Juan Manuel Santos visited the troubled department to announce additional measures to curb violence.
MORE: Santos sends extra police to curb violence in Valle del Cauca
The FARC banned the kidnapping of civilians for ransom and the hostage taking of security officials for political leverage early last year.
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The local police commander, Colonel Nelson Ramirez, said the FARC’s 6th Front — an elite unit of the guerrillas — retained the two cops while they were investigating allegations of extortion in a rural area some 15 miles west of the department capital, Cali.
“It was established that there was indeed a kidnapping of two policemen who were carrying out a verification of criminal activity in the area of ??Pradera and Palmira … We know that they [the guerrillas] took them [the policemen] when they were between Pradera and Palmira,” the colonel told Colombian media.
The FARC was not asked to respond to the accusation.
The rebel group — active in Colombia since 1964 — is currently in talks with the government to seek a negotiated end to the country’s decades-long armed conflict between leftist rebels and the state.
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