Colombian guerrillas free captive soldier, first release in 13 months

Colombia’s FARC rebels release captive soldier

VILLAVICENCIO, Colombia — Colombian rebels handed over a 23-year-old soldier to the International Red Cross on Sunday in their first release of a captive in more than a year.

Pvt. Josue Calvo had been held since he was wounded and captured last April. He walked out of a loaned Brazilian helicopter emblazoned with the Red Cross logo and into the long embrace of his father and sister after being picked up in the jungle and flown to this provincial capital at the eastern foot of the Andes.

“Joy came home again,” the father, Luis Alberto Calvo, said.

Although the rebels had reported him suffering from an undisclosed illness and not ambulatory, Calvo did not use the wheelchair that awaited him. He walked on his own, with the aid of a staff. But he did not speak — only giving a thumbs up — at a news conference at which his father explained that Calvo’s mother had abandoned the family when Josue was a boy.

Afterward, the soldier and his family were flown in a military plane to the capital, Bogota, where Calvo was to undergo tests at the Military Hospital.

The hospital’s director, Col. Nora Ines Rodriguez, issued a statement saying Calvo was treated for dehydration and was in stable condition. She said Calvo had suffered five gunshot wounds a year ago, including three in his right leg and one at the top of his left knee. The statement did not say where the fifth wound was.

Calvo is the first of two soldiers the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, says it is freeing this week in what the insurgents call their last goodwill unilateral release.

The other is Sgt. Pablo Emilio Moncayo, who has been held for more than 12 of his 32 years and whose father gained fame for walking halfway across Colombia to press for his release.

Piedad Cordoba, the opposition senator who led the rescue mission, said Calvo was emotional and lightheaded during the flight from the village of Santa Lucia, where rebels handed him over.

“YES, PEACE IS POSSIBLE, IT’S IRREVERSIBLE,” Cordoba said in the play-by-play of the release that she has been running on her Twitter feed.

The FARC says it will now demand a swap of jailed rebels in exchange for the 20 police and soldiers it still holds, most for more than a decade.

President Alvaro Uribe, who steps down in August after two consecutive four-year terms, is hugely popular in Colombia for aggressively fighting the FARC and dealing it crushing blows, including the 2008 rescue of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three U.S. military contractors and eleven other captives.

Speaking in the town of Arauca, Uribe welcomed Calvo’s release and said he had talked to the soldier by telephone. He said his government has no objection to humanitarian actions “provided that an agreement is not to release offenders to the FARC.”

Uribe has called the FARC’s unilateral releases cynical publicity stunts that belie their disregard for civilian life. Colombia’s armed forces chief says he believes the FARC was behind a bombing in the administrative center of the Pacific port of Buenaventura on Wednesday that killed nine people.

Analysts said they expected no movement on a possible prisoner swap until a new president takes office Aug. 7 after elections, the first round of which are set for May 30.

Los Andes University political scientist Sandra Borda noted that none of the presidential candidates have said they are disposed to negotiate with the FARC, which is “weakened but far from being defeated militarily.”

Calvo is the first FARC captive to be released since February 2009, when the guerrillas handed over two politicians, three police officers and a soldier.

The two Super Cougar choppers loaned by Brazil with a total of 20 military crew members were to fly Monday to Florencia, capital of the southern province of Caqueta, said International Red Cross spokesman Adolfo Beteta.

Plans call for them to retrieve Moncayo on Tuesday.

Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera, Luisa Fernanda Cuellar and Frank Bajak in Bogota contributed to this report.