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. The insurgents are promising to soon free a second soldier they’ve held for far longer.
Private 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,” his father, Luis Alberto Calvo, said.
PHOTO: EPA
Calvo is the first of two soldiers the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), says it is freeing this week in what the insurgents call their last goodwill unilateral release.
The other is Sergeant 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.
Although the rebels had reported him recovering from leg wounds 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 to Bogota, where Calvo was treated at the Military Hospital for dehydration and was in stable condition, its director said in a statement.
Colonel Nora Ines Rodriguez said Calvo suffered three gunshot wounds a year ago in his right leg that have healed — and a fourth that damaged the top of his left knee.
Senator Piedad Cordoba, who led the rescue mission, said Calvo was emotional and lightheaded during the flight from the village of Santa Lucia, where rebels handed the young soldier 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.
Speaking in the town of Arauca, Colombian President Alvaro Uribes welcomed Calvo’s release and said he spoke with the soldier by telephone.
He said he does not object to prisoner exchanges as long as they don not effectively return “criminals to the FARC.”
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