| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Boy promised in hostage handover not in rebel hands |
| 2008-01-07 |
| Leftist rebels had promised to hand over a 3-year-old along with the child's mother and a third hostage, raising hopes that a rescue effort spearheaded by Venezuela's president would succeed. But the result of a DNA test on Friday was downright soap opera material: It revealed that the boy, Emmanuel, had spent the last two years not in a jungle rebel camp, but in a Bogotá foster home. The result was a setback for those involved in the now-tabled rescue operation, as well as a major embarrassment for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The story of Emmanuel has transfixed Colombia since a Colombian journalist first reported in 2006 that the child had been born to one of the rebels' most prominent hostages, the former vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas, as the product of a relationship with one of her captors, reportedly a rank-and-file guerrilla named Rigo. The story drew in President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who has been negotiating with the FARC to release the child, his mother and another hostage. But what Chávez called "Operation Emmanuel" fell through last week when the rebels said operations by the U.S.-backed Colombian military were preventing them from handing over the hostages. On Friday, the chief federal prosecutor, Mario Iguarán, said DNA tests performed on Rojas's family members and the child in the Bogotá foster home proved that the boy known as Juan David Gómez is actually Rojas's son. The boy had been handed over at the age of 11 months by José Gómez, a peasant farmer who said he was the child's great-uncle, to child welfare workers in San José de Guaviare, a town in a FARC-dominated zone of eastern Colombia. The baby had a broken arm and was sick from malnutrition and leishmaniasis, an infection common in the jungle. The baby was rushed to Bogotá for an operation to heal his arm, then sent to a foster home in the capital, one of six million orphaned minors placed under the state's care. He lived there for two years in obscurity. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 This will have absolutely no effect on the reputation of the FARC as saviors of Columbia. |
| Posted by: gromky 2008-01-07 04:29 |