Hopes Rise for Release of Captives

Colombians were hoping Wednesday for the imminent release of more captives by Marxist rebels who freed 33 victims of a mass church kidnapping Tuesday.

The Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army, or ELN, still holds an estimated 58 captives--the remaining worshipers taken from La Maria Roman Catholic church in the southwestern city of Cali on May 30 and 24 people seized in an aircraft hijacking April 12.

Under an agreement that led to Tuesday’s release, the Colombian military is to suspend offensive operations in part of Bolivar province in the north for 72 hours from dusk Wednesday to pave the way for the freeing of at least some of the hostages from the plane.

ELN commander Felipe Torres said in an interview earlier this week that his group planned to free all its captives, including the passengers and crew from the hijacking.

The ELN, which was led by a defrocked Spanish priest until last year, seized nearly 160 people when its commandos swept down on La Maria church, carrying them off to a mountainous rain forest.

The rebels had already freed 89 of their captives before the latest release. Among those freed Tuesday was Jorge Cadavid, the priest who was celebrating Mass when rebels stormed the church, who told reporters that at least 34 churchgoers remained in rebel hands.

“We’re glad about the freeing of the 33 kidnap victims,” said Cali Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino. “But it’s wicked and contemptible that the guerrillas didn’t free everyone.”

Calling the ELN “miserable and mean,” Duarte repeated a threat to have the kidnappers excommunicated for a crime that shocked this predominantly Catholic nation.

Francisco Santos, leader of a civic group known as the Free Country Foundation, which campaigns against kidnapping and helps victims, said some of the remaining hostages would probably be held for ransom.

“They’re going to hold on to a few hostages and charge money for them,” Santos said.

The ELN and the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have long used ransoms to bankroll their war efforts.

The civil war has taken more than 35,000 lives during the last decade, and Colombia is now saddled with what state security officials describe as the highest rate of kidnapping in the world.

More than 2,600 abductions were reported by the National Police last year, and an overwhelming majority of the cases was blamed on rebels.

The government has ceded control over a Switzerland-sized area of southern Colombia to the FARC since last November, as a confidence-building measure to induce peace talks.

Officials have balked at the ELN’s demand for a similar land-for-peace deal in Bolivar, however, and preliminary negotiations with the ELN collapsed in March.