Colombian rebels free two hostages

Two women held hostage for more than five years by leftist rebels were released deep in Colombia’s eastern jungle Thursday and handed over to Red Cross officials in helicopters provided by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Onetime presidential campaign manager Clara Rojas, 44, and ex-lawmaker Consuelo Gonzalez, 57, were freed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in a clearing near the city of San Jose del Guaviare, given brief medical exams, then flown to Caracas, where their families received them in a tearful reunion.

Venezuelan state television showed the pale-looking Rojas and Gonzalez speaking animatedly and embracing government officials from Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba as a dozen or so armed FARC guerrillas looked on. Both took congratulatory calls from Chavez via satellite telephone at the jungle site.

“Don’t lower your guard, Mr. President,” Gonzalez told Chavez. “I bring this message from those who were left behind. There is still work to do.”

In the years since their kidnappings, Gonzalez’s husband has died and Rojas has given birth to a son, Emmanuel, 3.

The release came after an embarrassing failure 10 days earlier of the Chavez-led effort to liberate the two women and the young boy. That initiative collapsed amid the revelation that the rebels no longer had custody of the child. Instead, it turned out, he had been in state-sponsored foster care for two years.

Analysts say the operation is likely to add to Chavez’s prestige in the region and increase pressure on Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to reconcile with the Venezuelan leader. But the release is also seen as a token gesture by the rebels, who handed over the prisoners as a personal favor to Chavez but are thought to still hold 700 hostages.

The two leaders had a bitter falling out last year after Uribe ended Chavez’s efforts to mediate a comprehensive hostage release, saying he had broken protocol.

Chavez called Uribe a stooge for the United States and threatened to cut bilateral ties. Uribe accused Chavez of “expansionist” plans and of trying to legitimize FARC “terrorists.”

But Uribe is under increasing pressure both at home and abroad to secure additional releases and Chavez is the only “channel” available to him, said Bogota-based political scientist Alejo Vargas.

Uribe addressed the nation Thursday night, congratulating the hostages and their families and thanking Chavez.

But he also read the names of 33 police officers and soldiers still in FARC hands to make the point that hostages continue to suffer in limbo.

“The fate of the rest of the hostages gives us much pain,” Uribe said. But “we won’t achieve peace by assuming a stance of appeasement before terrorists.”

Chavez announced the release early Thursday in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.

“I plan to continue to work for the release of all the hostages and . . . I am optimistic that the way has opened for that to be achieved,” he said before the hostages arrived.

Rojas had been captured in 2002 along with her boss, presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who remains a hostage. Gonzalez was captured in 2001. Both appeared in good health as they reunited with their families at Caracas’ international airport and then attended a ceremony at the presidential palace.

“Until today, I have not been able to smile with any enthusiasm. So I’m smiling now as I haven’t in six years,” said Rojas’ mother, also named Clara, who was interviewed by Bogota-based Caracol Radio before her daughter arrived.

The release has refocused attention on the plight of the estimated 3,000 hostages being held in Colombia by the FARC, other rebel groups and criminal gangs. Freeing Betancourt, who has French and Colombian citizenship, has become a priority of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The FARC is also holding three employees of U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes, who were captured when their small plane crash landed in the Colombian jungle in 2003.

“What we want is that they not stop at two but let the rest of the hostages go as well and end this tragic history,” said Olga Lucia Gomez, executive director of Pais Libre, a Bogota-based advocacy group for families of kidnapping victims.

In a telephone interview with Caracol Radio, Rojas said she was separated from her son when he was 8 months old. She had requested he be taken from the hostile jungle environment and given to the International Committee of the Red Cross for care. The father is an unidentified rebel. She also said she had not seen Betancourt in three years.

The release effort began in August when Uribe agreed to allow Chavez to mediate a swap of hostages held by the FARC for hundreds of suspected rebels in government custody. That effort collapsed after Chavez broke protocol by contacting a Colombian general.

Chavez’s subsequent threats to cut ties alarmed Colombian businessmen, who exported $4 billion in goods to Venezuela last year. They quietly lobbied for a rapprochement.

Hope among the families of hostages was revived in late December when the FARC announced it would release Rojas, her son and Gonzalez to Chavez. Uribe had little choice but to agree, and Chavez in late December sent a humanitarian commission that included former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner to the town of Villavicencio to witness the release.

After the commission waited four days for jungle coordinates, the FARC wrote to Chavez on Dec. 31 that it was canceling the release because Colombian military continued its operations in the zone where it was to have taken place. In a shocking turnabout, Uribe countered that the rebels couldn’t deliver because they didn’t have Rojas’ son.

Colombian military intelligence had discovered that a child named Juan David Gomez who had been a ward of Colombian family welfare officials for two years was probably Emmanuel. The revelation was confirmed definitively by DNA tests this week by a Spanish genetics lab.

The FARC in 2005 apparently had placed the sickly infant in the care of a peasant sympathizer, who took the child to a hospital in San Jose del Guaviare when the boy’s health worsened. Showing signs of malnutrition and abuse, the boy was then taken by child welfare officials and placed in a foster care facility in Bogota.

Government officials this week said Emmanuel could be handed over to the Rojas family this month.

Human rights groups and governments hailed the release, but they also demanded that the FARC release its remaining hostages.

“We welcome the release of these two hostages,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey. “They should have never been taken hostage in the first place. . . . We also continue to call on the FARC to release all the hostages that they hold: Americans, Colombians and all others.”

Vargas, the political scientist, and others speculated that additional hostage releases were likely as the FARC tried to retouch its image, which hit a low point in June when 11 state congressmen in their custody were killed in gunfire. The rebels blamed a “military confrontation”; Uribe accused the rebels of executing them.

Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo, who was held hostage by the FARC for six years before escaping in December 2006, said no such prospects were in sight.

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chris.kraul@latimes.com