guardian.co.uk,
Associated Press in Villavicencio, Tuesday 3 April 2012
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| A Brazilian air force helicopter emblazoned with the Red Cross logo takes off to pick up the captive soldiers and police. Photograph: Fernando Vergara/AP |
Colombia's
main rebel group has freed what it says were its last 10 military and police
captives, returning the men to their families after at least 12 years spent in
jungle prisons.
The release
of the six police and four soldiers highlighted efforts to seek peace talks by
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America's oldest and most
potent guerrilla band, which has been weakened by Colombia's US–backed
military.
Flown from
a jungle rendezvous aboard a loaned Brazilian air force helicopter painted with
the Red Cross logo, the freed captives waved jubilantly.
They were
escorted by nurses to awaiting relatives for reunions behind closed doors. Some
jumped for joy on the tarmac.
Pets
accompanied some of the men: a peccary, a monkey, two small birds. A few wore
the Colombian flag over their shoulders. All looked newly shaven.
Their loved
ones were overjoyed.
"I
shouted! I jumped up and down!" said Olivia Solarte when she got first
word her 41-year-old son, police officer Trujillo, had been freed. He had been
held since July 1999.
The group
was flown to Bogota where other relatives were waiting and medical checks in
hospital were scheduled.
The rebel
group, known as the Farc, had announced Monday's liberation on 26 February in
tandem with a halt in ransom kidnappings.
President
Juan Manuel Santos called the release "a step in the right direction, a
very important step" but cautioned against "pure speculation" of
imminent peace talks.
He said he
wanted proof the Farc, which took up arms in 1964, is truly abandoning ransom
kidnapping. "When the government considers that sufficient conditions and
guarantees exist to begin a process that brings an end to the conflict the
country will know," he said.
It is not
known how many ransom kidnap victims the Farc holds.
The head of
Colombia's anti-kidnapping police puts the number at least six, including four
Chinese oil workers seized last June. Other officials put the number closer to
two dozen.
The
citizens' watchdog group Fundacion Pais Libre maintains a list of at least 400
people the Farc kidnapped or has otherwise held against their will since 1996
who were never freed. It does not expunge a name from its records until the
person is released or a body is found.
Two serious
goverment-Farc peace negotiations have failed over the past three decades and
recent weeks have seen increased violence in the conflict.
The Farc
killed at least 11 soldiers in a mid-March attack in Arauca near the Venezuelan
border and the military responded with two precision bombings on rebel camps
that killed more than 60 insurgents.
The rebels
have in recent years suffered their worst battlefield setbacks ever, beginning
when Santos was defence minister from 2006 to 2009 and thanks to billions in US
military assistance and training.
Their main
source of funding is the cocaine trade and military pressure has made holding
kidnap victims increasingly difficult for the Farc.
Monday's
mission was brokered by leftist former senator Piedad Cordoba, a friend of
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
Cordoba has
served as a go-between in the release of 20 Farc hostages since January 2008
and said her work would be done with this week's releases as she had no desire
to become involved in cases in which money rather than politics was involved.
She said,
however, that the activist group she leads, Colombians for Peace, planned to
send letters to the Farc asking it exactly how many civilians it holds.
The Farc
has only publicly acknowledged holding captives it considered
"exchangeable": police, soldiers or politicians it held hoping to
swap them for imprisoned rebels.
It held
scores of such prisoners in the late 1990s when it controlled about half the
countryside but gradually released them all, never obtaining the hoped-for
exchange.
Some
captives were rescued. The Franco-Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid
Betancourt and three US military contractors rescued in 2008 by Colombian
soldiers posing as members of a phony international humanitarian group. At
least 25 others have died in captivity, many killed by Farc insurgents to
prevent their rescue or escape.
Among those
in attendance for Monday's release was Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan rights
activist who won the 1992 Nobel peace prize.
She said it
was time for Colombia's government to respond to the Farc's gesture with its
own display of political willingness to attain peace.
But
analysts caution that peace talks, even back-channel negotiations, could be a
long time coming.
Many do not
believe they could happen before the 2014 presidential elections.
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