But splitting from the guerrilla group can carry big risks

By JOHN OTIS South America Bureau

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Once a guerrilla, always a guerrilla.

At least that's the credo of Colombia's largest rebel group, which insists that its foot soldiers remain loyal to the cause even from behind bars.

But in a startling development, more than 700 imprisoned rebels have renounced the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and are calling on the guerrilla army to make peace.

"We are telling the FARC that they no longer have a claim on us," Raul Agudelo, a high-ranking rebel commander, said in a prison courtyard surrounded by gray concrete walls — his home for most of the last five years.

"We don't want to ever again pick up a rifle and point it at a fellow Colombian."

Like Agudelo, many of the imprisoned guerrillas are experts in military strategy, explosives and kidnappings.

The FARC has been trying for years to fold these veterans back into its ranks by urging the Bogota government to trade them for rebel-held hostages.

But the dissidents have no interest in going back to the jungle to rejoin their old units, even if it would mean getting out of prison.

Instead, they have publicly called for their former brothers-in-arms to surrender.

And in exchange for reduced prison terms, many say they are willing to cooperate with the Colombian military, revealing intelligence on clandestine graves, arms caches and the locations of rebel hostages.

"These are people with 10, 15, or 20 years in the FARC who had a lot of responsibility," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said in an interview. "Because of that, the information that they can give us is much more valuable."

FARC force shrinking

Santos and others contend that the collaboration of FARC dissidents could further weaken the rebel group, which once fielded 17,000 fighters but now deploys about 8,000.

In the past year alone, about 2,500 guerrillas have turned in their weapons, Santos said.

Colombian soldiers have killed or captured several top rebel commanders.

And in perhaps the biggest blow ever to the FARC, the military last month rescued, without firing a shot, 15 rebel-held hostages, including ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans.

"This has been a historic year," Santos said.

The dissident movement, called Hands for Peace, formed last year as the FARC stepped up its campaign to try to swap about 40 high-profile hostages for imprisoned guerrillas.

Rebel leaders circulated a list of guerrilla convicts whom they wanted to spring.

But many of the prisoners on the list had time to reflect and came to the conclusion that the armed struggle was no longer justified.

Some rebels highly trained

Of the 700 who have renounced their membership in the FARC, some are illiterate foot soldiers jailed on minor charges, but others are high-ranking commanders like Agudelo who received years of training.

"The FARC has invested a lot in these people," said Liduine Zumpolle, a Dutch human rights activist who helped form Hands for Peace. "I think they are gold for the government."

Agudelo, 38, one of the most vocal dissidents, comes from a family tree of rebels.

Both his father and grandfather, who were impoverished farmers, were longtime members of FARC.

An activist in the Communist Youth organization, Agudelo joined the rebels as a teenager and eventually moved up the ranks to become the head of finances for one of the main rebel blocs in western Colombia.

'A lot of reflection'

Inside Bogota's La Picota prison, Agudelo said he ordered kidnappings and killings.

But eventually he began to view the FARC's brutal tactics as counterproductive because they turned the population against the guerrillas.

He was captured in 2003 and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

"It's due to a lot of reflection," Agudelo said of his decision. "As a political-military project, the FARC is a failure."

Still, breaking with the rebels carries big risks.

"Once you join the FARC, you are to remain a guerrilla until the revolution triumphs," said Omar Mosquera, a rebel explosives expert who also has denounced the guerrilla organization. "Even from prison, you are supposed to figure out ways to help the FARC."

Many of the dissident rebels, including Agudelo, have received death threats. Guards can be bribed, and weapons can be smuggled into the prisons to carry out killings.

Besides targeting the FARC, the dissident rebels are looking to help themselves.

Many have applied for special treatment under the country's so-called Justice and Peace Law.

The law, designed to disarm thousands of right-wing paramilitaries who fought against the FARC, stipulates prison terms of just five to eight years for those who confess their crimes, cooperate with government investigators, and provide reparations to their victims.

But in April, President Alvaro Uribe announced that the law would be applied "in a massive way" to imprisoned guerrillas who choose to collaborate with the government. Some have received sentences of up to 40 years.

'Distortion' of the law?

Critics, however, point out that the reduced sentences originally were designed for those who voluntarily put down their weapons, not for captured fighters who already were convicted and sentenced by the courts.

Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch, said that providing these benefits to guerrillas convicted of grave crimes such as kidnappings would be "a total distortion."

"You need clear rules," he said. "Yet the whole principle of the rule of law becomes subject to chronic renegotiation."

Zumpolle pointed out that Colombia has a long history of offering amnesty to imprisoned guerrillas.

Some, like Gustavo Petro and Antonio Navarro Wolff, left jail and went on to become popular, high-profile legislators and government ministers.

"If one day you want to have peace in this country, you have to be creative," she said.