Colombian army rescues abducted Swiss and Brazilian tourists

The men were kidnapped with their dogs The Colombian army has rescued two tourists
who were abducted three months ago by dissident guerrillas. The Swiss and Brazilian
tourists were freed after soldiers located them, also capturing a suspected
kidnapper. In mid-March, Daniel Max Guggenheim and Jose Ivan Albuquerque were
kidnapped by armed dissidents from the former rebel Farc movement, the army said.
"He told us we'd reached the cemetery," Mr Guggenheim said when recounting their
abduction. How were they abducted? The tourists were travelling through the Cauca
department when a gunman pointed a weapon at their vehicle. They were then
kidnapped along with their two dogs. The army's anti-kidnapping unit said the
kidnappers were part of the Dagoberto Ramos Mobile Column. The rebels were
demanding tens of millions of pesos. Then men were moved regularly and stayed at 11
different locations Despite being put through cold temperatures and mockery by
their captors, the men said they were not physically harmed. The rebels even
travelled to purchase food for the dogs. The men were moved regularly and stayed at
11 different locations. How were they rescued? Exact details are not clear but the
pair was rescued with their dogs during a military operation. The anti-kidnapping
unit said it also captured one of their captors. "We survived," Mr Guggenheim said.
"It's been more than a month and a half since we spoke to our families. It was
hard." "A million thanks to Colombia," he added. "I love the country in spite of
everything." Who are the Farc? The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
Colombia's largest rebel group, were founded in 1964 as the armed wing of the
Communist Party and follow a Marxist-Leninist ideology. Their main founders were
small farmers and land workers who had banded together to fight against the
staggering levels of inequality in Colombia at the time. The group signed a
historic peace accord in 2016 after four years of negotiations. It has since formed
a political party, which is also called Farc

EXCLUSIVE: Southern Command rebuilds intelligence relationship with Brazil years

after Snowden damage

South America’s largest country by landmass and economy is also a flashpoint for
criminal organizations, narcotics trafficking, and terrorism financing. Brazil once
provided vital intelligence to prevent transnational threats from reaching the U.S.
homeland. Then, Edward Snowden published a trove of classified information in 2013,
revealing wiretaps of then-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. Intelligence
cooperation and military partnerships with Brazil broke down, and the United States
lost a key partner. But a renewed security partnership under a new Brazilian
president is one of U.S. Southern Command’s chief priorities, its leader, Adm.
Craig Faller, told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview. “We get our
best intelligence from our very capable partners,” Faller said on a Zoom call from
Southcom headquarters in Miami. With a narcotics fight in full force across the
Caribbean and eastern Pacific and gaping intelligence holes in places such as
Venezuela, protecting the homeland requires partners and trust, he explained.
“Intelligence is foundational to anything we do, any decision I make,” Faller said.
Former acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and 33-year CIA veteran
David Shedd said the relationship with Brazil is vital in the hemisphere. “In
Brazil, it's very important for us to have an intelligence relationship with them
because of the tri-border area,” Shedd, now a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow,
told the Washington Examiner. The porous border region of Brazil, Argentina, and
Paraguay is a center point of money laundering, false documents, terrorism
financing, and other illicit activities. Even 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed
is known to have spent time there. “None of these things stay within their borders.
They become transnational organized crime,” Shedd said. “The damage done by Edward
Snowden is enormous,” he added. “So, when Dilma did not want the exercises or the
visits, and then the intel sharing, that tone came from the top.” Rebuilding a
relationship with a partner country is a whole of government effort, but the
security interests are coordinated in large part by military to military
cooperation. Southcom has the lead for the countries of the Caribbean, as well as
those in Central and South America. “This is a focus of United States Southern
Command with any country, with Brazil as one of our key partners,” said Faller, who
noted that a Brazilian two-star general will be joining Southern Command as a
liaison, putting Brazil on par with America’s closest partner in the region,
Colombia. “We have tangibly thickened our intelligence sharing processes and
procedures and actually our understanding, and we benefit greatly from that,”
Faller said. A military president Former army captain and Brazilian President Jair
Bolsonaro is known for inflammatory statements, his kinship with President Trump,
and his controversial pro-military stance. That has included speaking positively
about Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, a time when freedom of speech was
stifled and democracy advocates disappeared. While Brazil is now one of the most
vibrant democracies in the region, strengthening ties under Bolsonaro is delicate,
Faller explained. “I stay out of the noise,” he said. “We focus on strengthening
our partnership, whether it's intel sharing, whether it's the ability to exercise
together, planning, we stay out of policy and politics,” he said. “Their officers,
just like ours, they swear an oath, and they're swearing their oath to the
constitution.” Shedd, who dined with Bolsonaro during his 2019 visit to Washington,
said the Brazilian president is eager to strengthen ties to the U.S. at all levels,
and that benefits people in the U.S. “He had just a really big vision of putting
Brazil on the path to a strategic partnership with the United States,” he
explained, describing economic, military, and judicial cooperation. “In the
military area, he very much wanted to see a reversal of the agenda with [former
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva] first and then Dilma afterwards
(which, of course, was rife with corruption) and really rebuild that relationship,”
he said. Bolsonaro’s visit to Southcom in March, the first by a Brazilian
president, while it later caused a scare when his press chief tested positive for
the coronavirus, served as a sign of the rising military relationship with the
South American giant. Strengthening partnerships with countries that Faller refers
to as “neighbors” compensates where resources fall short of U.S. Central Command,
which manages the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which
counters China's influence in the Pacific. Russia made more port visits to Latin
America in 2019 than it had in decades, Faller said, while China has ramped up its
gifts of military equipment, including trucks and small boats, to countries in the
region. “We just don't have a lot of assets down there to see what they're doing,”
Faller said of the great power rivals. “So, a lot of this is we pick up bits and
pieces and pull together.” Shedd said in a country such as Venezuela, where the
U.S. no longer has a diplomatic presence, relationships with neighboring nations
fill intelligence gaps. “Presence matters,” he said. “And when you don't have it,
we do it by a proxy with friends and allies.” Shedd explained, “Colombia, Brazil
may be running sources inside Venezuela. They have a presence in Venezuela that we
may not have.” Faller used a sports analogy to make the case for continued regional
engagement and strengthening partnerships to counter great power influence and
regional security threats. “Our partners want to do that with us. We just have to
be there,” he said. “I never was in a sporting game yet that I won by not being on
the field.”

Brazil military hand out masks to protect isolated Amazon tribes

By Leonardo Benassatto BOA VISTA, July 1 (Reuters) - Soldiers handed out masks to
barefooted Yanomami indigenous people including body-painted warriors carrying
spears and bows and arrows on Wednesday on the second day of a military operation
to protect isolated tribes from COVID-19. The Yanomami are the last major isolated
people in the Amazon rainforest where dozens of indigenous communities have been
infected with the latest disease to come from the outside to threaten their
existence. "It's all under control. We detected no cases here," Defense Minister
Fernando Azevedo, a retired army general, told reporters at a frontier post called
Surucucu on the border with Venezuela. Azevedo said the death of two Yanomami
purportedly shot by illegal gold miners on the vast reservation was an isolated
case that is being investigated by the federal police. A gold rush that has brought
an estimated 20,000 gold prospectors to invade the Brazil largest reservation has
poisoned rivers and destroyed forest, and the Yanomami say the miners have brought
the novel coronavirus. Indigenous leaders appealed to the Supreme Court on
Wednesday to order the federal government to protect isolated tribes by barring
outsiders from reservation lands and expelling illegal poachers, loggers and
wildcat miners said to bring fatal diseases. The indigenous umbrella organization
APIB asked that invaders be removed, with the deployment of military forces if
necessary, from the reservations of the Yanomami, Karipuna, Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, Kayapó,
Arariboia and Munduruku peoples. APIB said 405 indigenous people had died of COVID-
19 by June 27, with 9,983 infected among 112 different tribes. In Surucucu,
Yanomami families with mothers carrying their bundled infants were frightened at
first by the arrival of the medical personnel and supplies of protective equipment
and medicine in roaring military helicopters. The men fumbled the mask as they
covered their faces painted with red body paint from tress barks. "The indigenous
health service (Sesai) is good for us, they help us so we came to ask for help to
see if we are well," said a Yanomami elder through a large white face mask. "We
walked four hours to arrive here," he said through an interpreter. Nurses took
temperatures and rapid COVID-19 tests. "When we arrived they were a little bit
afraid, observing us from afar, but then we started gaining their trust, they came
closer and all went well," said Brazilian Air Force medic, Lieutenant Fernanda
Ribeiro. "They ended up liking the care. It has been so rewarding!" (Reporting by
Leonardo Benassatto; Writing by Anthony Boadle; editing by Grant McCool) Our
Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.