BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) – The leader of the rebel group Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) was released Tuesday from a hospital where he was treated after he suffered a mild stroke, the government said Tuesday.
After spending two days in the hospital, Rodrigo Londono has now travelled to Cuba to continue his convalescence, the high commissioner for the country’s peace process said.
Doctors said the FARC leader, 58, checked himself into a hospital in Villavicencio in central Colombia on Sunday after having trouble speaking and moving his left arm.
That came a week after the FARC completed the surrender of their weapons to end a more than 50-year-old war under a historic accord with the government.
Announcing his release on Tuesday, the hospital said the rebel leader whose nom de guerre is “Timochenko” has largely recovered mobility in his arm and his ability to speak.
Years of talks that paved the way for the peace accord were held in Cuba, which along with Norway was a guarantor of the peace process.
Londono felt the first symptoms of the stroke on Sunday as he was preparing to visit one of 26 sites across the country where the approximately 7,000 FARC members gathered as part of the process to return to civil society.
The peace accord was narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum last year, but then amended and pushed through Congress.
The conflict that began when the FARC launched its uprising in 1964 left 260,000 people dead, more than 60,000 missing and seven million displaced.
© Agence France-Presse
