Hopes of Colombian hostage release fade amid row over child

Boy of kidnapped woman may be in care, says Uribe Credibility of government and Farc hang on DNA test
Sibylla Brodzinsky Medelln
Colombias protracted hostage crisis took a new twist yesterday when it emerged that the youngest captive held by leftwing rebels a three-year-old boy born to a female hostage and an unknown guerrilla could have been secretly spirited away to foster care in Bogot. Colombians gripped by the tale of Emmanuel, whose mother was a vicepresidential candidate when she was kidnapped in 2002, were on tenterhooks yesterday as they awaited the results of a DNA test on a boy in the capital who, the government said, might be the hostage-child. Emmanuel was supposed to have been released along with his mother, Clara Rojas, and a third hostage last month. But after a succession of delays the handover was frustrated this week when the Colombian government said that the boy might not be in the care of the rebels at all. Ocials took DNA samples from Rojas mother and brother on Tuesday. The test results should be known in several days time. The credibility of both the Colombian government and Colombias largest rebel army, Farc, is at stake, analysts say. Emmanuels existence was first disclosed by a Colombian journalist in 2006 and conrmed by an escaped hostage six months ago and in videos. According to the accounts, Emmanuel was raised by the rebels in jungle camps and was only allowed to see his mother occasionally. On long marches the hostages were often forced to take, they would take turns carrying the boy on their shoulders. Both hostages and guerrillas reportedly made clothes for the boy. However the Colombian government says it now has strong indications that the child was handed over to a peasant in the remote town of San Jos de Guaviare in 2005. That man, in turn, gave the boy over to the Colombian Family Welfare Institute, which transferred him to foster care in the capital, Bogot. Government ocials said there were many coincidences between what is known about Emmanuel and the boy in foster care, who was given the name Juan David Gmez Tapiero. Ocials said Juan David had suered an injury to one arm at birth, similar to the injury that the escaped police ocer said Emmanuel had suered. Juan David, when rst handed over to the welfare institute, suered from diseases most widely seen in the jungle, such as leichmaniasis and malaria. The man who handed over the child has reportedly told Colombian ocials that the Farc handed him the child in 2005. In an article on a website that publishes information from the rebel group, Farc called the allegation a smokescreen. How can it occur to anyone that the Farc, which does not recognise any state agencies, would hand over to [childrens services] their own child? the article said. The astonishing twist in a saga that captivated Colombia before the Christmas holidays began to leak out on Monday as the Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, ew to the town of Villavicencio where the release of the hostages, mediated by the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chvez, was to have occurred. Uribe accused the rebels of reneging on their pledge to liberate Emmanuel and his mother because the group did not have control of the boy. When Farc began to say they were not turning over the hostages, supposedly because of military operations, when we had done everything to facilitate the handover, we saw Farc was trying to fool Chvez, the international community and us, said the defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos. If Uribe is wrong it will be a huge political blow to him, said Adam Isacson, a Colombia analyst with the Centre for International Policy, a Washingtonbased thinktank. If hes right, Farc will be shown to have been lying all along. guardian.co.uk/colombia