Category World News

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Bogota, Colombia – The United States Department of State has designated Colombia’s largest criminal group, the Gaitanist Army of Colombia (EGC), a “terrorist organisation”.

The EGC, also referred to as the Clan del Golfo, has a presence across Colombia and is known for its involvement in drug trafficking, illegal mining, and extortion.

“Today, the Department of State is designating Clan del Golfo as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT),” read a statement by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio released on Tuesday morning.

“Based in Colombia, Clan del Golfo is a violent and powerful criminal organisation with thousands of members … responsible for terrorist attacks against public officials, law enforcement and military personnel, and civilians in Colombia,” continued the communique.

Last year, the Biden administration imposed financial sanctions on top members of the EGC but stopped short of classifying it as a terrorist organisation.

Washington previously designated other active Colombian armed groups as FTOs, including the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissident factions of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Under the FTO designation, US courts can sanction any individual or organisation considered to be providing assistance to, or linked to, the EGC.

The move will increase opportunities to sever links between the group and private enterprise, according to analysts.

“This is an organisation that has deep tentacles in the business world,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, deputy director for Latin America at International Crisis Group, adding, “it does open some interesting lines of investigation, for example, in money laundering and facilitating and logistics.”

But experts also warn that Washington’s move could undermine ongoing peace negotiations between the EGC and the Colombian state, mediated by the Qatari government. On December 5, Colombia signed a deal in Doha with the EGC to initiate a peace process aimed at the EGC’s disarmament.

“The designation of the EGC and its command structure as terrorists makes it almost impossible to continue these talks outside the country with security guarantees,”  said Gerson Arias, conflict and security investigator at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Colombian think tank.

He added that it complicates discussions on extraditions, a key point of contention in ongoing negotiations. According to Arias, the FTO designation effectively eliminates the possibility of the Colombian state providing guarantees that it will not extradite EGC leaders to a US prison.

Last week, the group’s chief negotiator, Alvaro Jimenez, told Reuters that the group’s commanders would likely face jail time in a potential deal, raising the stakes for non-extradition guarantees.

A breakdown in talks could intensify the conflict between the state and the EGC, according to Crisis Group’s Dickinson: “If peace talks were to end … I do think that that would lead to an escalation in violence across the north of the country, particularly.”

Earlier this year, the EGC killed dozens of state security officials in a targeted campaign.

But Dickinson stressed that the FTO designation does not preclude peace talks, citing the successful 2016 deal with the FARC, which was then a US-designated FTO.

Russia has labelled Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) an “undesirable organisation”, essentially banning its operation in the country.

The designation appeared in a Ministry of Justice register on Tuesday after Vasily Piskarev, head of the Russian parliament’s Commission for the Investigation of Foreign Interference in Russia’s Internal Affairs, said DW was “at the forefront of hostile anti-Russian propaganda”.

He added that the “undesirable” label means any form of cooperation with DW from now on would be prosecuted.

Russia regularly designates entities it says undermine its constitutional order or national security as “undesirable”. The law specifies prison terms of up to five years for funding such activity and six years for organising it.

The broadcaster had already been declared a “foreign agent”, a label used against critics of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s policies.

DW Director General Barbara Massing said in a statement that the broadcaster would not be deterred.

“This latest attempt to silence free media highlights the Russian regime’s blatant disregard for press freedom and exposes its fear of independent information,” she said.

Massing said DW’s Russian-language service, despite censorship and blocking, was reaching a larger audience than ever before.

“We will continue to report independently on the war of aggression against Ukraine and other topics about which little information is available in Russia, so that people can form their own opinions,” she said.

The German government decried the decision. DW quoted government spokesman Stefan Kornelius as saying it demonstrates that “the Russian leadership fears independent information, especially about the war of aggression against Ukraine.”

Germany’s Federal Foreign Office said “freedom of the press is no longer guaranteed” in Russia, DW reported.

The broadcaster said audiences in Russia could still read and watch its coverage through alternative browsers or VPNs.

It said that this year, DW’s Russian-language content has reached 10 million weekly viewers, primarily through video content.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, its Justice Ministry has banned dozens of groups critical of the Kremlin or Russia’s conduct in the war.

Tuesday’s declaration came after Germany on Friday accused Russia of a cyberattack targeting its air traffic control system and of spreading disinformation before February’s general election.

Russia dismissed the claims as “absurd” and “baseless”.