Top FARC dissident leader Ivan Marquez dead: Reports

By Sinan Dogan

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) - Ivan Marquez, who used to be second-in-command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and later became the leader of a faction of former FARC rebels who returned to arms after a peace deal with Colombia's government, has died in Venezuela, according to reports in Colombian media.

Several media outlets reported that Marquez, whose real name was Luciano Marín Arango, died in a hospital in Venezuela’s capital Caracas, where he was being treated for serious injuries he suffered in an attack in Venezuela at the end of June 2022.

Colombia and FARC reached a peace deal in November 2016, ending more than 50 years of conflict between the two sides.

Marquez was one of the negotiators of the deal but abandoned it just two years later in 2018 after his nephew was arrested for drug trafficking and sent to the US.

He later became the leader of the Segunda Marquetalia, a group made up of former FARC members who took up arms again.