IPS-English COLOMBIA: Two Hostages Handed Over by Rebels
 
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:37:07 -0800

 
Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Jan 10   (IPS)  - Two Colombian politicians held hostage
by the FARC guerrillas are reportedly on their way to Caracas in Venezuelan
helicopters sent to a secret location in the Colombian jungle early
Thursday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who arranged the rescue operation
with assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC), said he had spoken to the two women, Consuelo González and
Clara Rojas, by phone and that they were being flown to Caracas in
helicopters bearing the Red Cross symbol. 

Former congresswoman González, 57, was held captive in the jungle
by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) since 2001, and
former vice presidential candidate Rojas, 44, was seized in 2002.

The two helicopters earlier flew from the town of San Jose del Guaviare
in southeastern Colombia to a secret spot in the jungle.

The two hostages' families are waiting anxiously in the Venezuelan capital.

The Colombian government had suspended all military operations in
the area and the airport of San José del Guaviare was closed to all
other traffic.

ICRC official Barbara Hintermann said the group had received the
”happy news” that the two women were in the hands of her organisation.

The ICRC, which was in contact with the FARC and with the governments
of Venezuela and Colombia, had previously warned that the rescue mission
could take longer than one day. ”It depends on the logistical organisation
of the humanitarian mission, on weather conditions and other factors,”
said Red Cross spokesman Yves Heller.

Along with ICRC personnel, the helicopters carried Ramón Rodríguez
Chacín, who was recently named interior minister in Venezuela, and
Cuban Ambassador to Venezuela Germán Sánchez.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry had sent a request in writing to
Colombia to provide all the necessary ”authorisations and guarantees
to allow the humanitarian operation to go ahead with the discretion
merited by the case.”

Rodríguez Chacín had been in contact with the Colombian government's
Peace Commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, ”to coordinate the practical
details.”

The release was unilaterally offered by the FARC in compensation
to Chávez and Colombian opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba, whose efforts
to mediate a humanitarian hostage-prisoner swap were abruptly cut
short in late November by Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

Chávez and Córdoba worked tirelessly for three months to secure the
release of 45 hostages held by the FARC, some for as long as 10 years.
The high-profile captives are held by the rebels with the aim of eventually
exchanging them for imprisoned insurgents, who number around 500.

On Tuesday, Restrepo rectified statements by Foreign Minister Fernando 
Araújo, who had announced Monday that Colombia would not allow any
future international humanitarian missions to attempt to secure the
hostages' release.

”I hope that sooner rather than later, all of the people living this
dramatic situation in Colombia” will be free, said Chávez, when he
announced Wednesday that he had been given the coordinates to the
secret location where the handover took place.

Senator Córdoba, who has been the target of scathing verbal attacks
by Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos, an outspoken critic
of Chávez, cut short her vacation in Puerto Rico and flew to the Venezuelan
capital on Wednesday.

Information received by IPS in Caracas indicates that documents proving
that other hostages are still alive may have already been gathered.
To avoid risks to the messengers carrying the ”proof of life” documents,
they may have been handed over by the guerrillas to the humanitarian
mission, along with the two hostages.

On Nov. 29, the Uribe administration captured in Bogota two messengers
that the FARC had sent to Chávez with videos and letters showing that
their highest-profile hostage, former Colombian presidential candidate
Ingrid Betancourt, as well as three U.S. military contractors, politician
Luis Eladio Pérez and 12 soldiers and policemen were still alive.

The two women messengers and a man who was accompanying them as a
guide are now facing the threat of extradition to the United States.


Thursday's rescue operation got underway 10 days after a first attempt,
which was aborted because the FARC were no longer holding Emmanuel,
the young son born in captivity in 2004 to Rojas and a guerrilla fighter.
The rebels had promised to release Emmanuel along with his mother
and González.

The failed hostage release, which had been dubbed ”Operation Emmanuel”,
was directed by Chávez and coordinated by the ICRC, with the backing
of seven countries: Argentina -- which sent a delegation headed by
former president Néstor Kirchner --  Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador,
France and Switzerland, and received heavy international media coverage.

In the middle of ”Operation Emmanuel”, Uribe announced on New Year's
Eve that the guerrillas were stalling because they no longer had the
little boy, and not because of continued Colombian military operations
in the area or a lack of safety guarantees, as the FARC claimed.

According to Uribe, two years ago the boy had been seized by social
services in Bogota and placed in a foster home, because of suspicions
of mistreatment and neglect by the family he had been entrusted to
by the FARC when he was just three months old.

In a statement dated Jan. 2 and published Jan. 4, the FARC admitted
that they no longer had Emmanuel in their custody.

On Jan. 4, the authorities reported that DNA tests carried out with
samples from Emmanuel's grandmother and the boy who was in the care
of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) showed a match.

”This boy, the son of a guerrilla father, was placed in Bogota under
the care of honest people while a humanitarian agreement was being
signed,” said the communiqué, although it did not specify when Emmanuel
was placed with the family.

The FARC also warned that the government was planning on arresting
and imprisoning ”the people put in charge of taking care of the boy.”

With respect to the family in question, a source who wished to remain
anonymous told IPS that because of her professional position, she
would have known whether anyone related to the hostage question had
been arrested in Bogota. 

She said the FARC leadership had been deceived as to where and in
what conditions Emmanuel was being held, and maintained that the family
who had supposedly been put in charge of the boy was probably not
even real.

A former hostage, police officer Frank Pinchao, who after being held
for nearly nine years by the FARC in the jungle managed to escape,
spoke of Emmanuel in the present tense when he first made statements
to the press, on May 22.

”The boy is being taken care of by the guerrillas,” he said at the
time. ”They take him for brief periods to his mother (Clara Rojas)
so she can see him and hold him, but then they take him back, and
it is the guerrillas who are in charge of raising him.”

Pinchao said Rojas was suffering terribly because she was not allowed
to be with her son.

”She had the baby in a camp where the police and military hostages
were held in one house and the politicians and the three Americans
in another. That's where he was born. I was able to hold him, he's
very healthy,” said Pinchao, who is accompanied at all times by a
police escort.

Later, Pinchao changed his version several times. And after Uribe
announced that Emmanuel was in the custody of the ICBF, the former
hostage said he had only seen the boy twice, and that he had never
held him.

Whatever the case may be, now that Rojas has been released, the truth
about Emmanuel's hard life will undoubtedly soon come out.


*****
+ COLOMBIA: Jail the Messenger (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40392)
+ A Nation Torn - More IPS News on Colombia  (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/colombia/index.asp)


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