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Colombian military spots US trio held hostage for years

Colombia's army has located three US nationals in the hands of Marxist rebels, but has not attempted a rescue, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said on Monday.

“We have had very accurate information about the location of the [rebel] leaders, the hostages and the camps. Our people saw the three Americans bathing in the river, they even heard them speaking English,” Santos told RCN radio.

He said US nationals Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes and Marc Gonsalves were spotted by military staff from the opposite bank of the Apaporis River at some location in the southeastern department of Guaviare.

The three Americans, contractors for the US State Department, fell into the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in February 2003 when the rebels downed the plane they were on.

Santos, who did not give a date of the sighting, said the troops did not attempt a rescue because the hostages moved and it was not possible to guarantee their safety.

He also said he could not confirm the presence in the area of other hostages such as Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.

On Sunday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged the FARC rebels to free all their hostages, arguing the time had come to wind up their decades-old guerrilla insurgency against the Colombian government.

“I believe that the time has come for the FARC to release all the people it has up in the mountains unconditionally. It would be a great humanitarian gesture,” Chavez said on his weekly TV and radio show.

“Guerrilla wars have become history in Latin America,” he said.

Critics often have accused Chavez of backing FARC, but on Sunday he bluntly called their very existence into question.

“This far along in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of step, and that has to be said to the FARC,” Chavez said.

His announcement caught the Colombian government by surprise with Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos saying: “If it’s true and leads to something concrete, then it’s a very good news.”

Former Colombian hostage Luis Eladio Perez also told radio Caracol that it could soon lead to hostages being released.

Early this year, the FARC released six hostages to Chavez, but the Venezuelan leader said he had lost contact with the rebels after Colombia attacked a guerrilla camp in Ecuador in March, killing FARC’s second-in-command.

The FARC is holding some 750 hostages, including 39 high-profile hostages whom they want to swap for some 500 of their imprisoned comrades.
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