These are excerpts from the video released to the Associated Press by a member of the Colombian police. In the video, el Mono Jojoy, a member of the FARC secretariat and one of its most feared military commanders, is speaking to a group of over 200 FARC guerrillas shortly after the death of Manuel Marulanda, the FARC’s founder, in late March 2008.

The entire video lasts an hour. It was obtained earlier this month when Colombian authorities captured a FARC urban guerrilla in Bogotá. The video was on her computer taken when she was arrested.

The video is certain to complicate Colombian-Ecuadorian and Colombian-Venezuelan relations. El Mono Jojoy admits that the FARC funded Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s 2006 Presidential campaign, providing $100,000 USD. Correa has long denied this allegation even as documents on Raul Reyes’ computer captured in the February 2008 raid on his camp just across the border inside Ecuador suggested a close relationship between the FARC and the Ecuadorian government.

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Mauritanians are set to vote on Saturday in a presidential election a year after the overthrow of the country’s first elected president. There are four main contenders. Mauritania requires that a candidate get 50% +1 in the first round, otherwise the top two candidates square off in a second round. More from Al Jazeera:

Mauritanians are set to vote in a presidential election a year after the overthrow of the country’s first elected president.

General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who led the August coup and resigned from the army in order to contest the election, is among the favourites in Saturday’s vote.

But observers believe that no candidate is strong enough to emerge winner from the first round and that a second round run-off is likely on August 1.

At least 1.2 million of the nation’s three million people are eligible to vote.

The election follows an internationally-brokered bid led by Senegal to end a political crisis in a country twice the size of France.

Aziz’s biggest challengers are Ahmed Ould Daddah, head of the main opposition party, the Rally of Democratic Forces; Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, a parliamentary speaker and the candidate of the National Front for the Defence of Democracy, and Jemil Ould Mansour, leader of the Islamist party Tewassoul.

Talk of change

Sghaier Ould MBareck, a former prime minister, earlier this month announced that he was withdrawing his candidature to support Aziz, who overthrew president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi in the August coup.

In all, nine candidates are standing in the election, designed to restore constitutional democracy to the northwestern African country.

Aziz, a self-styled “candidate of the poor”, told his supporters during campaigning that he would “put an end to the waste and all the shocks that have brought Mauritania to its knees after several decades of misrule”.

Each main candidate has attempted to broaden their support base with talk of real change, economic and social progress and development in the largely arid nation on the southwestern side of the Sahara.

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Colombian-Ecuadorian relations plunged to a new low as a new video surfaced in Colombia in which FARC leader Jorge Briceño, alias el Mono Jojoy, speaks the FARC’s relationship with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. The FARC leader admits to helping finance Correa’s 2006 Presidential campaign. In addition, the FARC leader suggests that the FARC and the Correa government have been conducting on-going “conversations”. The video shows el Mono Jojoy speaking to a group of FARC guerrillas the day after Manuel Marulanda’s death in March of 2008.

More from Caracol Television (with video in Spanish):

Entre otras, el jefe militar de las FARC habla de la “ayuda en dólares a la campaña de Correa y posteriores conversaciones con sus emisarios, incluidos algunos acuerdos según documentos en poder de todos nosotros”.

La grabación fue incautada por la Policía Nacional en algún lugar de las selvas de Colombia y revelada este viernes por la agencia de noticias AP.

Según el propio ‘Jojoy’, alias de Jorge Briceño, los documentos que sellan la alianza entre la guerrilla y Correa “resultan muy comprometedores en nuestros nexos con los amigos”.

Además de la financiación a la campaña del presidente ecuatoriano, el ‘Mono Jojoy’ habla ante sus hombres de las “dificultades” para gobernar de Hugo Chávez, de la muerte de Manuel Marulanda, el jefe máximo de la organización armada ilegal, ocurrida el año pasado.

The story in English from the Associated Press:

An hour-long video police found in a computer of an alleged rebel appears to confirm that Colombia’s largest rebel army gave money to the 2006 election campaign of President Rafael Correa of Ecuador.

The video shows the second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia reading the deathbed manifesto of founding leader Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda. The manifesto states that FARC made contributions to Correa’s campaign, but it’s possible that Correa wasn’t aware of them.

The video, given to The Associated Press by a government official on condition of anonymity due to political sensitivity, adds weight to evidence found in a half-dozen electronic documents recovered at a rebel camp destroyed in a cross-border raid last year. Correa has accused Colombia of fabricating the documents, despite an investigation by the global police agency Interpol that determined they were not altered.

The same rebel manifesto turned up on a different rebel computer recovered in October. But in the video it is read aloud by Jorge Briceño, a member of the FARC’s ruling secretariat and No. 2 commander, which will make it harder to deny.

Ties between Colombia and neighboring Ecuador are deeply frayed, and the video is sure to complicate relations further. Colombia is outraged that the FARC, a leftist group on the U.S. State Department’s terror list, was operating out of Ecuador, allegedly with the support of that country’s leftist government. The State Department had no comment on the video.

Ecuador broke diplomatic ties after Colombia crossed into its territory last year to raid the rebel camp. Attempts by the Organization of American States and the Carter Center to mediate the dispute have been stymied.

Told of the video Friday, Ecuador’s security minister, Miguel Carvajal, denied that Correa’s government had “any relation in the campaign or has any relation with or contributions from groups such as the FARC, and certainly no type of accord.” Correa himself has repeatedly denied any ties to FARC.

The video was found on a computer seized May 30 in the Bogota home of a suspected FARC operative, and finally decrypted last week. A senior Colombian prosecutor, anti-terrorism unit chief Hermes Ardila, confirmed that the video was found on one of three computers seized in the arrest of Adela Perez, 36 – “the secretariat’s key player in Bogota.”

It shows Briceño reading from a laptop perched on a roughhewn shelf to about 250 somber-looking rebels in a jungle clearing.

Briceño first informs the troops of Marulanda’s death and of changes in the rebel leadership. He reads from a missive from someone present when Marulanda died on March 26, 2008, at age 78, of an apparent heart attack.

“We awake today with an immense solitude, so very sad. The comrade died yesterday, the 26th, at 18:20 hours,” Briceño reads.

The faces of his young audience are grim. They look dumbstruck, distressed. At one point, Briceño pauses briefly and says, “What was that sound? A bomb?” He gets a negative reply from off camera.

(more…)

Tributes have been paid at the funeral of Trooper Joshua Hammond who was killed in Afghanistan earlier this month. The 18-year-old died alongside Colonel Rupert Thorneloe in Helmand province. Sky’s Enda Brady reports.

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Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs magazine and Carla Robbins of The New York Times editorial board join Martin Savidge to discuss the weeks top stories: The escalating war — and increasing casualties — in Afghanistan, the US commitment to human rights abroad and Hillary Clinton’s role in US foreign policy.

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Indonesian police say suicide bombers were behind a pair of attacks on two luxury hotels in the capital, Jakarta.

Nine people were killed and several others wounded when the bombs detonated almost simultaneously early on Friday at the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels. As Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen reports, closed circuit television footage caught the moment one of the bombs exploded in the lobby of the Ritz.

Jemmah Islamia has denied responsibility but intelligence experts suggest that the organization may have splintered with one faction taking a hard line approach and resuming a bombing campaign.

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A group of soldiers who took part in Israel’s assault in Gaza in December and January say widespread abuses were committed against civilians under “permissive” rules of engagement. Inside Story discusses whether Israel did commit war crimes and if it did, can those responsible be held accountable.

Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah. Soldiers who serve in the Territories are witness to, and participate in military actions which change them immensely. Cases of abuse towards Palestinians, looting, and destruction of property have been the norm for years, but are still excused as military necessities, or explained as extreme and unique cases. Our testimonies portray a different and grim picture of questionable orders in many areas regardind Palestinian civilians. These demonstrate the depth of corruption which is spreading in the Israeli military. While this reality which is known to Israeli soldiers and commanders exists in Israel’s back yard, Israeli society continues to turn a blind eye, and to deny that which happens in its name. Discharged soldiers who return to civilian life discover the gap between the reality which they encountered in the Territories , and the silence which they encounter at home. In order to become a civilian again, soldiers are forced to ignore their past experiences. Breaking the Silence voices the experiences of those soldiers, in order to force Israeli society to address the reality which it created.

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Modern self-determination and the concept of nationality are closely linked, and have frequently led to instances of ethnic cleansing. Can nationalism and multi-ethnic societies co-exist? Must self-determination imply ethnic cleansing?

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Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s former president, has made his first public appearance since the country’s disputed election, in which he backed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

During a sermon at Tehran University, Rafsanjani said the country was “in crisis”, and that all Iranians were the losers, following the election result.

As Al Jazeera’s Roza Ibragimova reports, the speech came as thousands of opposition supporters staged more demonstrations outside.

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