Farc hostages – and their pets

A large sign was placed on Villavicencio cathedral, reading, “We celebrate the return to life and liberty of our country’s heroes.”

Maria Cristina Rivera, a spokesman for the ICRC, said the hostage release took place over several hours “in a rural area.” Piedad Cordoba, a former senator who helped negotiate group’s return, said: “We all were singing in the helicopter, full of emotions.”

The men thanked the ICRC before being taken to receive medical attention.

Olivia Solarte, whose now-41-year-old son Trujillo had been held since July 1999, told of the moment she learnt he had been freed: “I shouted! I jumped up and down!” FARC is Latin America’s oldest and most successful guerrilla group, bringing chaos to Colombia in protest at what it sees as the government’s close ties to the United States and ill treatment of peasants and the working classes.

It has been weakened in recent years by a series of successful military operations, and as it announced the captives’ release the rebel group said it would now suspend its tactic of kidnapping but had not forsworn violence. The main source of FARC’s funding is from the cocaine trade.

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos described the move as “a step in the right direction,” but “insufficient” to pave the way to peace talks.

He added: “We share in the joy of these releases, and we especially appreciate the pledge by the FARC to stop 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.”

The Colombian government is insisting that FARC provide information on all of the more than 400 hostages it had kidnapped since 1964, including two members of the security forces, taken in 1998 and 1999, who are said to have died in captivity.

Many of those kidnapped were business leaders, oil workers and cattle ranchers snatched as they drove on remote highways, or dragged them from their beds.

They were often chained up in mountain hideaways while kidnappers demanded their families stump up thousands and sometimes millions of dollars in ransom. Those whose relatives refused were often killed.

Three Chinese oil workers were kidnapped as recently as last year and remain in captivity.

Olga Gomez, director of the group Free Country, said: “There are still hundreds of hostages that the FARC should free if they really want Colombian society to believe their announcement that they will not continue kidnapping.”

Last month, FARC killed 11 soldiers in an attack near the Venezuelan border, suffering more than 60 fatalities in return when the military responded by bombing two rebel camps.

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