Colombian general freed by FARC resigns

The general whose brief capture by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Marxist rebels prompted Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to suspend peace talks resigned his from post on Monday, saying he should have taken more security precautions.

Santos halted negotiations after FARC captured Gen. Ruben Alzate and two companions in Colombia's western department of Chocó on Nov. 16, and the president refused to resume talks until the they and two other soldiers, taken in a separate incident, were freed.

The two soldiers were freed last week, and Alzate and his companions, a corporal and a civilian lawyer, were freed on Sunday.

Government and FARC negotiators are returning to Cuba, where peace talks were being held, for a two-day meeting, though talks have not officially resumed. Santos is under pressure to put an end to the longest-running internal conflict in the Western Hemisphere, and the kidnapping was a serious setback for peace talks, which for the past two years have been a cornerstone of the Santos administration.

"For love and respect of our military institution, which has been affected by these events, I have asked the national government to withdraw me from active service," Alzate said in a televised statement. “I need to recognize that my eagerness to be of service and the love I hold for the people of Chocó has brought me to not apply the security procedures that I should have adopted to travel to that community.” 

He was the first general to be taken by the rebel group in a half-century of fighting.

The general said that his captors forced him and his companions to walk through the jungle for eight hours a day and that he was handcuffed at night.

FARC and the Colombian government began negotiations in Cuba in 2012 to seek to end a conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people since 1964.

Wire services