A former guerrilla member of the extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) died this Thursday in the heart of the city of Buenos Aires after being reduced by the police while participating in a demonstration. Facundo Molares, an Argentine ex-combatant whose extradition had been requested by Colombia, suffered a cardiac arrest in a struggle with the agents who were trying to disperse the mobilization, according to the Emergency Medical Care System of the capital, SAME. “Resuscitation maneuvers were performed until his death was confirmed. The causes of death are related to cardiac arrest due to risk factors. The body was transferred to the judicial morgue for the corresponding autopsy,” the statement read. The protest at the Obelisk has ignited after the death.
Molares fought with the FARC for 15 years and laid down his weapons in the middle of the peace process. He then reappeared in Bolivia, where he was imprisoned for almost a year, and flew to Buenos Aires on a plane sent by the Alberto Fernández government in 2020. In November 2021, Argentine police arrested him in Trevelin, a small tourist town in Patagonia. , after a red alert from Interpol. The request had come from Colombia, a country that wants to try Molares for the kidnapping of councilor Armando Acuña, which occurred on May 29, 2009 in an area that was then under FARC control. Finally, he was released in July 2022.
The 47-year-old man was demonstrating this Thursday at the Obelisk in a protest called by left-wing political groups and social organizations “against the electoral farce.” The protest, which had had a small call, occurred three days after the primary elections are held in the country to define the presidential candidates for the October general elections. “The troops advanced on those who were demonstrating on the esplanade of the Plaza de la República and began to beat them. Then they imprisoned them to the ground,” the human rights organization Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) wrote in a message.
“We were finishing the act and deconcentrating. Policemen come to evict us. There they detain a comrade. When a comrade is detained we go to take him out and they all come to repress us. In this situation, they detain four more compañeros and Facundo Molares, who is decompensated,” one of the protesters told the Télam news agency. In images collected by the people present, the man is seen face down on the floor with a red face and minutes later the police are trying to revive him. The four detainees were taken to the police station while Morales was taken to the hospital “without vital signs,” according to witnesses.
The authorities of the City of Buenos Aires, governed by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, of the center-right alliance Juntos por el Cambio, who is presenting himself in his party’s primaries this Sunday as a candidate for president, told the national media that the man was reduced while trying to “set fire to an urn”. The death of Molares occurs one day after the violent death of an 11-year-old girl in a city in the province of Buenos Aires paralyzed the electoral campaign in Argentina. Political and social organizations have called for a demonstration for the death of the former guerrilla this Friday morning.
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