Víctor Julio Suárez Rojas aka "Jorge Briceño Suárez", (nom de guerre: Mono Jojoy) is a high-ranking member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia a Colombian guerrilla organization. Briceño commands the Eastern Bloc of the FARC-EP and is a member of the FARC Secretariat.^[1]

Suárez Rojas was born in La Uribe, Department of Meta and entered the FARC at the age of 12 years old in 1975.^[1] Suárez Rojas grew up without a father and received little education.^[2]

Suárez Rojas is under indictment in the United States for killing three US citizens, terrorism and narcotics trafficking activities.^[3] The Colombian government also indicted Suárez Rojas on charges of rebellion, narcotrafficking, terrorism, kidnapping, and extortion, among other crimes.

Suárez Rojas has been implicated in a bombing in Bogotá that killed 36 and injured more than 100 civilians in February 2003. He was indicted by the United States in 2002 for killing three Americans in 1999. He also may have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of three US American missionaries in 1993. He is wanted on drug-trafficking charges in both Colombia and the United States. More recently, he was charged in early 2006 for forcibly recruiting children for the FARC. Suárez Rojas remains one of the most dangerous and important Colombian guerrilla leaders at large. The U.S. Attorney General has requested his extradition if he is captured. He is most likely in eastern Colombia or in Venezuela.

Suárez Rojas is considered to be one of the most radical rebels in the FARC; he issued the order to demand the resignation of the town mayors and hundreds of civil employees of Colombian municipalities, and to kidnap or execute them if they did not resign their posts. He has been accused by Colombian authorities of participating in the kidnapping of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and the massacre of a member from the Turbay Cote family just a few miles from the former demilitarized area of El Caguan.

He is also accused of participating in the kidnapping of three American contractors. A proof of life video of the three Americans released by the FARC in 2003 showed Mono Jojoy telling the Americans that they are “prisoners . . . in the power of the FARC,” and that the governments of the United States and Colombia have “abandoned and forgotten you.” The three Americans were rescued in July 2008. [1]

[edit] Alleged assassination plot

On May 11, 2008 a Colombian military commander told the press several bodyguards of "Mono Jojoy" had been plotting to murder the FARC commander to collect the US$ 5 million reward on his head. Three bodyguards were executed after "Mono Jojoy" found out about the plot, and other three of them are known to have escaped. One turned himself in to the authorities.^[4]

[edit] Chase

On May 24, 2008 the Colombian President Álvaro Uribe said the police and the army are pursuing him : "Mr. Jorge Briceño, we are behind him. At the one called 'Mono Jojoy'. We are behind him. He used to appear in pictures showy, fat, puffed, without any wrinkles, blowed. But the heroic action of the soldiers and cops of the homeland are after him. Generals, soldiers, cops of the homeland: put him in a diet. Put him to eat roots in the jungle, so the homeland may take away that headache..." ^[5]

[edit] References