Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has signed a decree granting amnesty to another 3,600 members of the Farc rebel group, which last year reached a peace deal with the government.<\/p>\n
It is the third and final amnesty decree signed by Mr Santos.<\/p>\n
More than 7,000 rebels in total have been granted amnesty or released from prison as part of their reintegration into Colombian society.<\/p>\n
Last month the Farc completed its disarmament process.<\/p>\n
The rebels handed all its 7,000 registered weapons to the United Nations mission in Colombia.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Monday, the United Nations Security Council voted to set up a new mission in the country, which from September will oversee the implementation of the peace deal.<\/p>\n
The move puts an end to more than five decades of conflict.<\/p>\n
The Marxist rebel group was found in 1964 to defend the rights of landless peasants.<\/p>\n
It entered formal peace negotiations with the government in 2012. The talks were held in Cuba and lasted four years.<\/p>\n
The final agreement was rejected by the Colombian people in a referendum last October. But a reviewed version was approved by Congress a month later and signed into law.<\/p>\n
The Farc has agreed to give up its armed struggle to become a political party.<\/p>\n
A key part of the agreement was the rebels’ reintegration to civilian life. It was agreed that all Farc members who did not commit serious crimes would be granted amnesty.<\/p>\n
The three decrees signed by Mr Santos have benefited 6,005 former rebels. Another 1,400 who were serving prison sentences have been released in the past few months.<\/p>\n
Mr Santos won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his peace efforts.<\/p>\n
Following the success of the Farc negotiations, Colombia’s second rebel group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, also entered formal peace talks. They are being held in neighbouring Ecuador.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has signed a decree granting amnesty to another 3,600 members of the Farc rebel group, which last year reached a peace deal with the government. It is the third and final amnesty decree signed by Mr Santos. More than 7,000 rebels in total have been granted amnesty or released from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[9103,9104,9105],"class_list":["post-335450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-colombia-president","tag-cuba-talks","tag-farc-rebels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=335450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=335450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=335450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=335450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}