Colombia: Release Of Last Soldiers Held Hostage By FARC Imminent
By MISNA
From yesterday at 6:00pm local time until tomorrow at 6:00am all military and police operations were suspended in the area where the 10 hostages held by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) are due to be released.
Based on the procedures that were established, two helicopters supplied by the Brazilian airforce will take off today at 8:00am local time from Villavicencio, in the central Meta department, for an unspecified location in the forest to pick up the freed hostages and transfer them to Bogota.
The 10 hostages, soldiers and police officers, will be unilaterally released between today and tomorrow after being held for over a decade by the guerrilla group. The FARC declared that they are the last prisoners in uniform in their hands out of the around 500 hostages they held until the failure of the last peace talks with the administration of Andrés Pastrana some ten years ago.
The guerrilla group announced in December their intention of releasing the hostages under the mediation of the former senator Piedad Córdoba, to whom they have already consigned around 20 since 2008. The FARC decided in February to release all ten, announcing an end to ransom kidnappings. It however remains unclear if they are still holding civilians.
