Female members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) often are targets of physical and sexual abuse by their male counterparts in the country’s largest terrorist group, according to the Colombian government. (National Police/Handout/Reuters)

TOLIMA, COLOMBIA – The Colombian daily El Nuevo Diario reported on Monday that a commander of the FARC in the southern department of Tolima ordered the execution of a 13-year-old girl that had fled the terrorist group’s camp after suffering sexual abuse from FARC members. Even more disturbing, the girl had been given to the FARC by her mother – twice. 

General Guillermo Suarez, commander of the Colombian Army’s “Task Force South” in Tolima, told local media that the mother first gave the girl to the FARC in the rural area of Chaparral, Tolima. Later, the girl escaped from the ranks of the Gabriel Galvis column of the FARC because she was being subjected to mistreatment and sexual abuse, but was then turned back over to the terrorist group by her mother.

"We sent our units to search for the girl, but unfortunately she ended up back at her mother’s home. And in a very irrational act, her mother handed her back over to the terrorist known as 'Theofilo,' who ordered his men to execute her," General Suarez told RCN Radio.

The Army general said that in this region of Tolima, where there is a significant FARC presence, the guerrillas have long recruited children between 12 and 14 years of age by offering arable land to very poor residents in exchange for their children. 

"This is a wake up call to all parents in southern Tolima. They cannot be handing over their children to war. Besides the danger to their child, it also encourages these practices of forced recruitment used by the FARC," declared the Colombian military in a statement to Radio Caracol.

For his part, the Director of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF) in the region, Carlos Eduardo Buenaventura, called for a rigorous investigation to address and apply appropriate sanctions to the murdered girl's mother who put her at risk. The institution said it has received dozens of complaints of child recruitment by the FARC in southern Tolima.