Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos [official website, in Spanish] on Sunday pardoned [press release, in Spanish] 30 former guerrilla soldiers in jail for non-violent crimes. Yesid Alvarado Reyes [official website, in Spanish], Colombian Minister of Justice and Law, explained that members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) [BBC backgrounder] who have been convicted of minor crimes, such as rebellion or illegal possession of weapons, are expected to be released by the end of the year. The pardons come on the tails of peace talks between the FARC and the government, from which a formal agreement is expected to be signed next spring, and is anticipated to produce a “climate of confidence.”

Criminal activity by illegal armed groups has been an ongoing issue within Colombia, with progress made during recent peace talks. In June 2014 the country’s government and the FARC rebels agreed to create [JURIST report] a truth commission to investigate the deaths of thousands of people in the last five decades of the country’s conflict. In March 2014 Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] issued a report [JURIST report] stating that illegal armed groups have caused hundreds of people [official report, PDF] to flee Colombia’s main Pacific port of Buenaventura in the previous two years. And in August 2013 Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled [JURIST report] that a law providing reduced penalties for rebels who confess crimes related to their membership in illegal armed groups is constitutional. FARC has been fighting the Colombian government since 1964, seeking to establish a communist government in the Republic of Colombia.