U.S. Seeks News of Missing Missionaries

The U.S. government is demanding that Marxist rebels in Colombia release information on the whereabouts of three American missionaries who disappeared in Panama eight years ago.

“We call upon those responsible within the [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] to come forth with a complete account of our missing fellow citizens,” read a statement from State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

The rebel group’s unwillingness to cooperate with inquiries into the fates of Dave Mankins, Rick Tenenoff and Mark Rich “has imposed inhuman hardship on the missionaries’ families,” Boucher said.

His statement marked the eighth anniversary of the 1993 abduction of the three men, who were working as missionaries for the Christian group New Tribes Mission when they were abducted from a Panamanian village near the country’s border with Colombia.

Whether the rebel group was involved in the initial abduction was unclear, but reports from rebel defectors and others later confirmed that the three were in their custody, according to New Tribes representatives.

Initially the rebels demanded millions of dollars in ransom, but they later refused to negotiate with U.S. and Colombian officials and New Tribes representatives. Conflicting reports of the missionaries’ fates have emerged since then--some say the men were murdered by rebels in 1994, while other reports claim the men were alive as recently as 1999.