Rodrigo Londoño Echeverry, alias "Timochenko," is only the third commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the group's nearly 50-year history. Of the three commanders, Timochenko has the most mysterious past.

Some sources say he is a trained medical doctor, but there is no record of his studies. Most say he hails from the Quindio, a coffee-growing department in central Colombia which saw some of the worst political violence during a decades-long upheaval that began in the 1940s and ended just before groups like the FARC emerged in the mid-1960s.

Timochenko was trained in Cuba and Russia, which led to him taking on his nom de guerre, presumably in honor of Semyon Timoshenko, a famous Soviet General during the second world war.