By IANS
Bogota : A giant banner on Bogota’s city hall and hundreds of white flags have been put up in southwestern Pitalito town to welcome the two hostages released by Colombia’s largest insurgency group after years in the jungle, Spanish news agency EFE reported Saturday.
Former congresswoman, Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo, 57, and one-time vice presidential hopeful Clara Rojas, 44, were handed over Thursday by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to a Red Cross delegation led by Venezuela’s interior minister in southeastern Colombia.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez mediated the hostage release.
The women and their families, who travelled to Caracas Thursday to receive them, are expected to return to Colombia.
The two women were part of the 45 high-value hostages the FARC seeks to exchange for hundreds of jailed insurgents through a humanitarian agreement with the government of President Alvaro Uribe.
The FARC announced last month that it would release Gonzalez, Rojas and her son Emmanuel to representatives of Chavez as “amends” for Uribe’s decision to end Chavez’s mediation mission aimed at brokering a prisoner swap.
But the initial operation for the release ended in a failure Dec 31.
Chavez announced Wednesday that the FARC had provided him with coordinates, and the mission was carried out the next day with no difficulty.
Residents of Pitalito, Gonzalez’s hometown, celebrated her freedom Friday with a mass thanksgiving and decorating the municipality with hundreds of white flags.
In Bogota, Mayor Samuel Moreno ordered a giant banner with pictures of both the women to put up in the city hall. People have also prayed for the early return of 700 other hostages held by the FARC for ransom.
Gonzalez, who was abducted in 2001, said in Caracas that she is anxious to return to Colombia to hand over the letters and photographs from other captives to their dear ones.
“It is a human tragedy that we cannot put to one side,” the former lawmaker told Bogota’s Caracol Radio by telephone Friday.
She said some of her fellow hostages, mostly military and police officers, were held in chains for extended periods. “It’s hard to believe such things could happen in this century.”
Rojas, in a separate interview with W Radio, said she knew from personal experience that captives who tried to escape were likewise chained-up.
Confirming earlier accounts from a journalist, who spent time at a FARC camp in the jungle, Rojas said she and Ingrid Betancourt, the former presidential candidate, made several failed attempts to flee.
“We were not lucky, as we got lost in the jungle,” she said.
She said she insisted on remaining with Ingrid when the FARC kidnapped her in 2002, though the guerrillas were prepared to let her go.
Gonzalez said on two occasions during the three weeks prior to their release that she and Rojas noted the “military operations were very close to us”.
Meanwhile, Chavez Friday called for the removal of the terrorist label designated to the FARC and the country’s second largest guerrilla group ELN.
Bogota rejected the proposal.
The FARC is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US and EU.
It was formed in 1964 with an estimated 20,000 fighters under the command of the group’s septuagenarian founder, Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda.