U.S. prosecutors have charged a Colombian citizen with trying to buy hundreds of assault rifles and thousands of grenades for a Marxist guerrilla group in exchange for cash and cocaine, officials said on Wednesday. Carlos Enrique Gamarra Murillo, 53, worked as a weapons broker for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, between March 2003 and April this year, said the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida. It said in a statement the weapons he tried to obtain were worth nearly $4 million and included 60 M-60 machine guns, 60 multiple grenade launchers, 600 M-16 assault rifles, 600 Galil 7.62 mm assault rifles, 500 AK-47 assault rifles, and 4,000 40 mm and 60 mm grenades. "Those who seek to supply narco-terrorists with weapons and ammunition must be brought to justice for their actions," U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in the statement. The indictment also charged Gamarra Murillo with trying to distribute 2 metric tons of cocaine, which law enforcement officials said was worth around $30 million in the wholesale trade. Prosecutors said the weapons would have been paid 40 percent in cash and 60 percent in cocaine, once they had been delivered from the United States to Venezuela, which borders Colombia. The 17,000-strong FARC has been fighting a guerrilla war for four decades. Thousands have been killed in the conflict. The United States has branded the group a terrorist organization and accused it of financing its forces through Colombia's multibillion-dollar drug trade.
