On 2 July 2008 a covert rescue operation codenamed Operation Jaque by the Colombian Special Forces disguised as FARC guerillas resulted in the rescue of Senator and former Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, the Americans Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell and eleven soldiers and police officers.
Major figureheads such as Whoopi Goldberg of ABC’s The View, Dustin Moskovitz, Co-Founder, Facebook, James K. Glassman, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Oscar Morales, Founder, One Million Voices Against the FARC, Luke Russert, MSNBC, Matthew Waxman, Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School.
In February 2008, the Venezuelan government launched a new operation to liberate four more hostages held by the FARC: Luis Eladio Perez, Orlando Beltran, Gloria Polanco and Jorge Eduardo Géchem all of them former senators kidnapped by the FARC in order to pressure the Colombian government.
Elda Neyis Mosquera García (nom de guerre Karina aka Nelly Ávila Moreno) is the former commander of the 47th Front of FARC-EP, a communist rebel group in Colombia.
During the diplomatic crisis caused by the 2008 unrest in Bolivia, the United States government froze the assets of several senior members of the Venezuelan Government: ex-Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, senior DISIP director Henry de Jesús Rangel and military intelligence chief Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, accusing them of "arming, supporting and financing" the FARC and their "killing of innocents", according to information discovered on Reyes' computers.
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The Colombian Administrative Department of Security (DAS) reported that it had asked for Interpol's technical support in order to decipher the seized FARC computers.
Bonafini stands behind her support to organizations accused of terrorism such as FARC.
As a journalist he has also interviewed several Colombian Guerrilla leaders such as Raul Reyes (†) from FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombian) and Manuel Perez Martinez (†) head of ELN (National Liberation Army).
The FARC guerrillas originally demanded that in order to proceed with the humanitarian exchange, the government must demilitarize a zone, which are the municipalities of Pradera and Florida in the southern Department of Valle del Cauca.
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On November 8, 2007, Chávez met at the Palacio de Miraflores with alias "Iván Márquez" one of the highest members of the FARC and members of its Secretariat.
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On June 17, 2007, Professor Gustavo Moncayo, father of a soldier held by the FARC guerrillas since 1997, began to walk as protest from his hometown Sandoná, in the department of Nariño, southern Colombia, to Bogotá, seeking to promote an agreement for the release of his son Pablo Emilio.
Milton de Jesús Toncel Redondo aka Joaquín Gómez, aka Usuriaga (born March 18, 1947 in Barrancas, La Guajira), is a Colombian guerrilla Block Commander, member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commanding the Southern Bloc of the FARC-EP and since March 2008 an official member of the Secretariat as a replacement for Raúl Reyes.
Stefan M. Audrey describes the Sandinistas, Shining Path, 19th of April Movement, and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as the main organizations involved in left-wing terrorism in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s.
The Rastrojos' other ally, Daniel Barrera Barrera, alias "El Loco," struck similar agreements with the FARC in other areas until his arrest in September 2012.
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Los Rastrojos have frequently fought battles against the guerrilla groups FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) in the southern Cauca department.
According to the FARC, the capture of Rodrigo Granda in Venezuela in late and the capture of other operatives, such as Simon Trinidad, in Ecuador would allegedly include CIA participation.
The local FARC commander César and an additional rebel boarded the helicopters along with the hostages.
Tom Hart Dyke, a plant hunter who follows the tradition of the Victorian and Edwardian orchid hunters, was held in 2000 by kidnappers thought to be FARC guerillas in the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, while hunting for rare orchids, a plant for which he has a particular passion.
Jorge Torres Victoria also known as "Pablo Catatumbo" (born March 19, 1953 in Cali, Valle del Cauca Department) is a Colombian guerrilla leader, member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and part of the secretariat of the FARC and their higher command known as the Estado Mayor Central which is made up some 30 to 60 members.
He has also thrown a bottle of red ink over André Malraux, the French minister of culture at the time, robbed a bank in Nice of 10 francs using a sawn-off shotgun, and cut the tip off one of his own fingers at an art exhibition in Colombia, V Festival de Performance de Cali, in protest at FARC guerillas holding the French-Colombian politician Íngrid Betancourt hostage.
The source for these documents was allegedly a 2008 cross-border raid by Colombian military into Ecuador which destroyed a FARC camp.
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The German magazine Der Spiegel reported in 2008 that Rodriguez Chacín was a frequent guest at FARC camps in Colombia and that Hugo Chávez had assigned him the task of managing communications with FARC.
On 13 December 2004, Rodrigo Granda, a member (the "foreign minister") of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or "FARC"), was captured by individual Venezuelan officials in Caracas, Venezuela, and transferred to Cúcuta, Colombia (a departmental capital on the two nations' common border), where he was arrested by the Colombian authorities on 14 December.
It was brought to the world stage for being the place where FARC commander Raúl Reyes died in the hands of the Colombian Air Force sparking a regional diplomatic crisis in 2008.
He was also known for being the associate of Brazilian drug dealer Fernandinho Beiramar and for participating in an illegal arms deal of 10,000 AK-47s for the FARC through the Peruvian government official Vladimiro Montesinos, an adviser of former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori.
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He later joined the FARC in May 1987 when he was 22 years old under the supervision of guerrilla leader Iván Márquez, a high-ranking member within the FARC chain of command.
On September 19, 2008, heavy fighting occurred between the Colombian army and the FARC's sixth front during an attack on Toribío, Cauca Department.