FARC tortures boy

Where is the world outrage? It’s time to put a bounty on the heads of the FARC drug dealers…who call themselves freedom fighters. Declare their secure jungle locations a free hunting zone and sell hunting permits to one and all. Dealing with these animals doesn’t work. It didn’t work with Pablo Escobar and it won’t work with the FARC. Free fifty hostages and they will take another one hundred and the cycle continues….

The FARC runs a very big business…drugs and kidnapping and it has nothing to do with helping the poor. The U.S. doesn’t negotiate with kidnappers which is sad for the kidnapped victims, but it’s the only thing that will discourage further kidnappings. (no profit)

A three-year-old boy named Emmanuel became a tragic symbol of Colombia's intractable political strife when his miserable existence was first revealed to the world in 2006.

Born in captivity to Clara Rojas, a vice-presidential candidate kidnapped in 2002, and sired by a rebel with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the child provided new impetus for the government to negotiate the return of hundreds of hostages held for years by drug-dealing guerrillas in the country's dense jungles.
"Free Emmanuel" grew to be a popular rallying cry in the headlines of Colombia's newspapers. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez christened his ill-fated attempt last week to rescue the boy, his mother and another hostage "Operation Emmanuel" in his honour.

But when the heavily publicized prisoner exchange disintegrated, Emmanuel may have become a pawn in the face-saving fallout as the Colombian government and the FARC blame each other for the mission's failure and harden their positions.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe dropped a bombshell at a New Year's Eve press conference suggesting the FARC didn't hand over the boy because he is no longer in rebel custody.

Instead, Mr. Uribe hypothesized, Emmanuel is the real identity of an orphan abandoned at a hospital in the country's east in 2005 and now in the care of a Bogota foster home.

Ms. Rojas's mother and brothers, who had flown to Caracas for an expected reunion with the released hostages, have returned to Bogota to provide DNA samples they hope will prove the boy's true identity.

The mystery surrounding the toddler now believed to be Emmanuel has provided a stunning twist to Colombia's horrific hostage saga, that French newspaper Le Monde called worthy of the plot of a South American soap opera.

Ms. Rojas and Colombian
presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt were kidnapped by the FARC as they campaigned in 2002.

For years, little was known about the fates of the two most valuable political prisoners held by the rebels, until journalist Jose Enrique Botero, known for his contacts within the FARC, published a book in 2006 revealing that Ms. Rojas had given birth to a son in captivity.

He wrote that Emmanuel was delivered in the jungle through a crude caesarean section conducted with a kitchen knife and later separated from his mother.
Mr. Botero quoted FARC founder Manuel Marulanda saying of Emmanuel: "The kid is half us and half them."

Being half FARC did not apparently spare Emmanuel from guerrilla cruelty. A police officer who escaped after being held prisoner for nine years alongside Ms. Rojas and the boy, revealed last May that Emmanuel had been burned with cigarettes and suffered from a mangled left arm that had previously been broken.
Details of Emmanuel's miserable life revived popular demand for action to free the hostages in Colombia. The seizure of videotapes in a military raid in December showing Ms. Rojas and Ms. Betancourt still alive contributed the political will.

With French President Nicolas Sarkozy putting freeing the hostages at the top of his foreign-policy agenda due to Ms. Betancourt's dual French citizenship, Mr. Chavez in neighbouring Venezuela stepped in to be the saviour and also cast himself as a regional power broker.

But as Mr. Chavez very publicly negotiated the release of Emmanuel, Ms. Rojas and kidnapped congresswoman Conseulo Gonzalez de Perdomo, Colombian officials grew suspicious that a man who had abandoned a boy of about the same age and description two years earlier was suddenly back to reclaim him.
Mr. Uribe recounted Tuesday that, in 2005, Jose Crisanto Gomez left a malnourished 11-month-old boy at a hospital in San Jose del Guaviare saying he was his great uncle and unable to care for him.

Now he was back reporting to be the child's father.
Colombian intelligence agents had long suspected Emmanuel was no longer in FARC hands, but Mr. Uribe said alarm bells suddenly sounded.
It could be days before the results of the DNA tests are known, but already the circumstantial evidence is mounting.

The man who abandoned child in 2005 is said by Colombia's attorney general to be in protective custody and cooperating with authorities investigating the matter.
Daily El Tiempo also reported that the man has confessed that the boy was a "FARC child."

It took place in the San Jose del Guaviare, a region near where Ms. Rojas is believed to have been held when she gave birth.
The child, currently known as Juan David Gomez, is also said to bear scars consistent with witness reports of Emmanuel's mistreatment, including burn marks and a broken left arm.

While the confirmation the child in Bogota is Emmanuel would signify a rare ray of light in dark days, Colombia observers fear the whole debacle could mean months or years more hardship for some 750 other hostages.

"After this, the guerrillas and the government will dig in their heels," political commentator Daniel Coronell lamented.

Mauricio Romero, a Bogota-based analyst with the think tank International Centre for Transitional Justice, added: "Considering the deep distrust between Chavez and Uribe and between Uribe and the FARC, any future effort toward hostage release will require a wider international effort."

By elk on Jan 4, 2008, 07:21 in Politics & the war.

Timba says on Jan 4, 2008, 08:08:

I was reading that the guerillas made gains in 2007 and now control almost half of the countryside (rural areas).

billyb says on Jan 4, 2008, 08:42:

What were you reading? Voz? Or Chavez' Xmas wish list?

durito says on Jan 4, 2008, 08:42:

"I was reading that the guerillas made gains in 2007 and now control almost half of the countryside (rural areas)."

Where exactly where you reading this? The FARC webpage?

thegrower says on Jan 4, 2008, 09:04:

When was there last kidnapping? I heard it was almost 3 years ago! 1/2 the countryside no way i would have seen them I travel ALOT and live here. I am in Caldasand have traveled to Ecuador and Venazuela and never saw any militia so what half do they own?

RJQuilla says on Jan 4, 2008, 15:16:

Yep, that would be alot of territory. Considering the Gov't controls the roads that is nearly impossible.

durito says on Jan 4, 2008, 15:31:

"When was there last kidnapping? I heard it was almost 3 years ago!"

They've kidnapped people in the last year.

Robert Jorge says on Jan 4, 2008, 20:26:

I like the hunting license idea.

b bruce says on Jan 5, 2008, 00:52:

How about some good old fashioned American Air Force arc-light carpet bombing! I think there is room in the Plan Colombia budget for some surplus B-52's. Do it one grid square at a time. Place may look like Utah afterwards, but hell Utah has it's good points!