"Nobody was killed or injured in the attack on a bus. Other attacks, on companies that refused to pay revolutionary taxes, always happened in the middle of the night. I am 100 percent sure that no civilians ever died."
She also defended FARC kidnapping and extortion.
"People who don't pay their taxes to the state go to jail. People who don't pay our revolutionary tax go to our jail. That's what they call kidnapping, though we've decided not to do it any longer."
"As far as attacks are concerned: We're an army," she added. "We use weapons and those weapons kill."
Nijmeijer first met celebrity in 2007 when Colombian soldiers found a diary, written in Dutch, in a rebel camp the military had bombed. The author was disillusioned, sarcastic.
"I am tired, tired of the FARC, tired of these people, tired of the communal life. Tired of never having anything for myself," Nijmeijer wrote in the diary, which Colombia's then-Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, who is now its president, disseminated with delight.
Santos said the diary should discourage any thoughts abroad that the FARC's struggle is heroic.
"In certain circles in Europe the romantic image persists that the rebels are like Robin Hood, or 'Che' Guervara, fighting against evil for the good of the poor," Santos said. "Nijmeijer fell into that trap."
She described the FARC's commanders, all men, as materialistic and corrupt and complained about their strict discipline — no smoking, no phone calls, no romantic relationships without their consent.
People speculated that she'd be punished, perhaps even executed for insubordination.
Terrified, members of her immediate family traveled to Colombia to seek her out and try to talk her into leaving.
She refused.
The next time she was heard from publicly was in 2010, when Botero released a video interview of her in a rebel camp in which she defiantly professes allegiance to the FARC.
"Just come and try to 'free' me and we'll receive you here with AK (Kalashnikov rifles), with .50 (caliber machine guns), she says, dressed in olive green fatigues and cradling an assault rifle.
She was by then under the command of the top FARC commander Briceno, who would be killed in a September 2010 military bombardment that Nijmeijer survived.
Nijmeijer told Botero last year that she could hear Briceno yelling to his aide after the first few bombing runs to get his fighters out of the camp.
And then both were silenced.
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Associated Press Writers Michael Corder in the Hague and Frank Bajak in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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