COLOMBIA:A young Colombian boy who was born captive in a leftist rebel camp and whose release was promised last week has been living in foster care since 2005, the country's attorney general said yesterday, citing DNA test results.
The revelation is a further blow to the credibility of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, which claimed to be holding the boy, named Emmanuel, and promised last month to turn him and two other hostages over to Venezuela's left-wing president, Hugo Chavez.
The deal to release Emmanuel, his mother, Clara Rojas, and kidnapped lawmaker Consuelo Gonzalez crumbled on Monday when the rebels accused the army of intensifying its operations in a jungle area where the hostages were to be handed over.
Colombian president Alvaro Uribe denied the allegation, accused Farc leaders of lying and said there was evidence that Emmanuel, now aged three or four, had already been secretly handed over to child welfare authorities in 2005.
DNA tests were ordered using samples from the boy and Ms Rojas's mother to see if she was his grandmother.
They showed a "high probability" that the child is indeed from the same family, attorney general Mario Iguaran said yesterday.
If confirmed in a second round of tests in Spain, the identification of Emmanuel would reinforce Mr Uribe's position that he cannot trust the Farc, making future hostage talks more difficult.
Emmanuel was born to Ms Rojas and one of her guerrilla captors in an insect-infested jungle camp where hostages are poorly fed and often chained, according to former captives.
He is seen as a symbol of the young victims of Colombia's four-decade-old guerrilla war and became a national obsession this week when Mr Uribe said he was mistreated by his captors before being turned over.
Emmanuel's name and other details of his life in guerrilla custody were revealed last year by a police officer who escaped the rebels after eight years in captivity, sometimes in the same camps as Ms Rojas and her son.
"The Farc was playing games again and this time Chavez was taken in," said Michael Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.
The rebel army is holding about 750 hostages for ransom and political leverage. - (Reuters)