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| - A Colombian court has sentenced a former FARC fighter to nearly 29 years in jail for the kidnapping and murder of a three-man Ecuadorian press team in 2018, the prosecutor's office said Tuesday. Jesus Vargas, who goes by the alias Reinel, was given a sentence of 28 years and eight months, it said -- the first person convicted in the case. Reporter Javier Ortega, 32, photographer Paul Rivas, 45, and their driver Efrain Segarra 60, were abducted in March 2018 while covering a story on violence along the Ecuador-Colombia border. They worked for Ecuador's influential El Comercio newspaper. The trio had been held hostage by Vargas, "who was responsible for holding them until 'Gaucho', then the head of the dissident group, ordered their assassination," the Colombian prosecutor's office said in a statement. Their bodies were found in a mass grave three months later in Colombia's southern Narino department, a major drug cultivation site, in a case that drew international condemnation. Gaucho, whose real name was Walther Arizala, was killed by in a Colombian military operation in December 2018. He had led a group of rebels who rejected a 2016 peace deal the FARC signed to end decades of armed conflict with the government. The militants had demanded the release of Arizala allies captured in Ecuador in exchange for the liberation of the press team. Vargas, 29, who was arrested in July 2018, confessed his involvement in the murders, and has asked forgiveness from the victims' families, according to the prosecutor's office. In a joint statement, family members of the murdered trio and the Press Freedom Foundation (FLIP) said the investigation had not been thorough, and "has not found all the material or intellectual authors" of the crime. Specifically, the FLIP said the investigation had not looked into potential blame on the part of the Colombian government for having carried out military actions that may have thwarted negotiations for the release of the three. The lobby group Nos Faltan Tres (We Are Missing Three) said it would continue its pursuit of justice. "This (conviction) does not end our fight, because it is only a small step of justice on a path littered with impunity," it said. The thick jungle border area has been wracked by drug-related violence ever since FARC transformed itself into a political party following the landmark December 2016 peace accord. Some 2,500 FARC dissidents remain active in the area, funded mainly through drug trafficking and illegal gold mining. jss/vel/mlr/ft
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