MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th November, 2020) The Colombian authorities have detained a man with links to the National Liberation Army (ELN), the left-wing armed group, over his alleged involvement in the massacre of five people in the southwest of the country, the Prosecutor's Office said.
"The Special mobile Group together with the Technical Investigation Team (CTI) of the prosecutor's office, the Criminal Investigation Department of the National Police and the National Army, managed to detain Reneider Juzpian, alias 'Brayan', who allegedly gave the location and physical description of the victims to a group of killers," the statement said, published by the prosecutor's office on Monday.
The prosecutor's office accused Juzpian of being behind murders and illegally possessing firearms. He has not confessed to the charges.
The massacre in which five people died took place in the Argelia municipality of Colombia's Cauca department last Saturday.
On Monday, Colombian President Ivan Duque and Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said that the ELN, dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other illegal armed groups, were responsible for the wave of the massacres that happened this year, including the murders that took place in Antioquia and Cauca regions where at least 13 people died.
According to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), 309 people have been killed in 77 massacres in Colombia so far this year.
