Colombia Rebels Reportedly Seize 3 Americans

Leftist guerrillas were blamed Monday for the abduction on Sunday of five petroleum engineers, including three American citizens working in Colombia.

The Medellin cocaine cartel, meanwhile, freed a kidnaped journalist after using him and at least nine other hostages to try to pressure the government into abandoning its anti-drug fight.

The state oil company Ecopetrol said that two men and a woman saying they belonged to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, abducted three U.S. petroleum engineers and two of their Colombian colleagues near the northern town of Tibu.

The group released one of the Colombians and told him to carry news of the abductions to officials, William Giraldo, an Ecopetrol spokesman, said.

He identified the three Americans as Robert Hogan, Larry Sams and John Bagbey and said they are employed by an Oklahoma mining company under contract to Ecopetrol.

The official added that Ecopetrol had not established the motive for the kidnapings. The ELN has terrorized the petroleum industry for years to try to pressure the government into nationalizing it.

A statement from “the Extraditables,” as the Medellin drug bosses call themselves, said they were releasing the journalist Juan Vitta, who is about 60, because he was suffering heart pains.

Vitta’s freedom came just four days after the Medellin traffickers offered to surrender in exchange for government concessions. Cartel members demanded that authorities protect their safety, prevent their extradition and drop a demand that they confess their crimes.

Justice Minister Jaime Giraldo responded by repeating that the government would respect the rights of surrendering traffickers and prohibit their extraditions. But he insisted that drug suspects confess at least one of their offenses. Giraldo and other officials called on the cartel to release its hostages as proof of its desire for peace.

Hours after gaining his freedom, Vitta also called for the release of six other journalists still held by Medellin drug bosses.

“At this moment, I cannot find a logical and just reason for the Extraditables to continue to hold the other journalists in their power,” he said in a live radio interview after flying to Bogota from Medellin, where he was freed.

Vitta said his captors had driven him all night in a black four-wheel-drive vehicle before dropping him off in Medellin.

Vitta, editor of the weekly news magazine Hoy por Hoy, had been held for 86 days when he was freed. The freed hostage said he was treated well by his captors but added that he and the other six journalists were kept in separate rooms and he could not vouch for the condition of the others.