Colombia suspends arrest warrants and extradition orders for guerilla group 

Colombia’s newly elected president, Gustavo Petro, announced on Saturday that he was suspending arrest warrants and extradition requests for members of the left-wing guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN), as he seeks to restart peace talks between both groups. 

During his campaign, Petro promised that he would restart talks and negotiations between his government and the ELN after nearly 60 years of war. He said he would bring “total peace” to the country. 

"I have authorized the reinstatement of the protocols, allowing negotiators to again reconnect with their organization, suspending arrest warrants for those negotiators, suspending extradition orders for those negotiators in order to start a dialogue with the National Liberation Army," Petro said.

"This resolution initiates a new possibility of a peace process in Colombia," Petro added. 

The leaders of ELN, a group founded in 1964 by radical Catholic priests, have been in Cuba since the previous talks with the government were called off in 2019. 

After Petro’s election, the guerrilla group said they would be willing to consider negotiations with the new government of the former member of the M-19 guerrilla group. 

The president added said that the negotiations with the group could begin where the previous ones left off, under the government of Juan Manuel Santos, who served as president from 2010 to 2018. 

The talks between ELN and the Santos government began in Ecuador but were later moved to Cuba. Santos’ successor Ivan Duque stopped the talks after the ELN killed 22 police cadets in a bomb attack in Bogota. 

The ELN has around “has some 2,400 combatants and is accused of financing itself through drug trafficking, illegal mining, and kidnapping, have not advanced partly because of dissent within its ranks,” reported Reuters.