Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Raul Reyes (center) before he got snuffed. It was info on his recovered laptop that led to the uranium bust.

BOGOTA, March 26- Colombia said it seized at least 66 pounds (30 kg) of uranium from the country’s biggest left-wing rebel group on Wednesday, the first time radioactive material has been linked to the four-decade-old guerrilla war.

The uranium was found in a rural area long considered a Marxist guerrilla stronghold just south of the capital Bogota.

It is being examined by government experts, the defense ministry said in a statement, although it did not say where the material came from or what it could be used for.

An expert on Colombia’s cocaine-fueled conflict said rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, do not have the facilities needed to make a bomb with uranium.

“This appears to have been part of a black market operation that the guerrillas were trying to use to make money,” said Pablo Casas, an analyst at Bogota think-tank Security and Democracy.

“This is new for Colombia and could bring the FARC into the major leagues of black market terrorist transactions,” he said.

The government said information about the stash of uranium was found earlier this month in computer files left behind by top guerrilla leader Raul Reyes, who was killed in a Colombian bomb strike against a FARC camp in neighboring in Ecuador.

(Reuters)