Government, Rebels Exchange Ill Prisoners

The government and Colombia’s largest guerrilla faction swapped dozens of ill prisoners Saturday, an exchange that they hope will encourage peace talks to end a 37-year conflict.

Hours after authorities freed 11 rebels from jail and flew them into guerrilla territory, presidential peace envoy Camilo Gomez flew to the same rebel-dominated southern region and received 29 government servicemen in return.

The policemen and soldiers were flown in helicopters to an army base in southern Caqueta province, where television images showed them being swarmed by family members. Some of the reunited families collapsed on the grassy field in tears.

“I never believed they would let me leave that cemetery of the living until I boarded the helicopter,” said one of the freed policemen, 29-year-old Alexander Zambrano.

Zambrano languished for nearly three years in a hidden jungle pen after fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, captured him and dozens others during an August 1998 assault on an anti-narcotics base.

Red Cross medics were on hand to treat the exhausted servicemen. Many are suffering from hernias, stomach ulcers and malaria.

Elsewhere inside FARC territory Saturday, freed rebels in white T-shirts stepped off a plane onto a dirt airstrip, where they were hugged by top rebel commanders and saluted by long lines of heavily armed guerrillas. FARC chief Manuel Marulanda then welcomed back his comrades with handshakes.

Luzmila Rojas, whose son Oscar Monroy was one of 45 servicemen captured by the FARC in a November 1998 attack on the eastern city of Mitu, said she was grateful to both President Andres Pastrana and Marulanda for making the prisoner exchange possible.

“I never lost hope I would see him again,” Rojas said of her son.

The swap, in which the FARC is expected to free 42 of its prisoners over the weekend, is the most tangible result of negotiations between the government and the rebels that began in January 1999.