Guillermo Tellier, president of the Chilean Communist Party Wednesday labelled Colombian claims that he and fellow party members had links with the FARC guerrilla group “absurd.”
In a statement at the beginning of Wednesday’s session in the Chilean House of Representatives, Patricio Melero, leader of the center right UDI party, had asked Tellier and his colleague Lautaro Carmona to explain the accusations by the Colombian prosecutor general.
“Just because the Communist Party had relations with the FARC, it doesn’t mean that we share, agree with, or finance the FARC’s activties in Chile, this is absurd,” Tellier responded.
Chilean daily El Mercurio, revealed Wednesday that last week authorities in Santiago had received a dossier from the the Colombian prosecutor general. According to these documents, based on information found in the computer files of the dead guerrilla leader alias “Raul Reyes,” seven members of the Chilean Communist Party actively supported the rebel group’s operations in Chile.
In the dossier’s chapter entitled “The Influence of the FARC in Chile,” Colombian prosecutors allege that the elected politicians Tellier and Carmona were among these seven members. While the exact nature of the politicians’ involvement has not been disclosed, it has emerged that they have been accused of working with the FARC’s international commission in Chile.
The dossier also claims that radical members of the Chilean indigenous Mapuche groups have received training from the FARC in guerrilla camps based in northern Ecuador.
