Hostages free

CARACA – Four Colombian lawmakers begin their first full day of freedom yesterday, the day after being released by FARC guerrillas.

Speaking in Caracas, they told of their years-long ordeal and of other captives left behind in the jungles of Colombia. “It’s the greatest feeling: to be born again.You can’t imagine the horrors of living seven years in the subhuman conditions we were kept,” Luis Eladio Perez told reporters late Wednesday after being picked up by Red Cross officials flown in on Venezuelan aircraft.He explained he had survived a heart-attack, three diabetic comas and a kidney malfunction because of tropical diseases.He also said he feared for the most high-profile prisoner still held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Ingrid Betancourt, and vowed to do all to have her freed as well.Betancourt, a 46-year-old French-Colombian who was seized in 2002 as she campaigned for the Colombian presidency, was “very, very sick, physically and morally spent,” he said, adding that he last saw her on February 4.Perez said three Americans captured in 2003 by the rebels were also faring badly, adding that they would likely remain in captivity unless a FARC leader who was jailed for 60 years in January gets his sentence reduced by US courts.Perez and the three other freed hostages – Gloria Polanco, Orlando Beltran and Jorge Gechem – were recovered Wednesday by Red Cross and Venezuelan officials.They were flown out of the southern Colombian jungle in two Venezuelan helicopters bearing the Red Cross symbol and later flown by plane to Caracas.The four had spent more than six years in the hands of the Marxist FARC, who constantly moved them around in tropical woodland to prevent their rescue by the Colombian military.It was the second such joint Red Cross-Venezuelan mission in as many months.In both cases, the FARC said it would only hand the hostages over to services commanded by leftwing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has rocky relations with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.”It’s the greatest feeling: to be born again.You can’t imagine the horrors of living seven years in the subhuman conditions we were kept,” Luis Eladio Perez told reporters late Wednesday after being picked up by Red Cross officials flown in on Venezuelan aircraft.He explained he had survived a heart-attack, three diabetic comas and a kidney malfunction because of tropical diseases.He also said he feared for the most high-profile prisoner still held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Ingrid Betancourt, and vowed to do all to have her freed as well.Betancourt, a 46-year-old French-Colombian who was seized in 2002 as she campaigned for the Colombian presidency, was “very, very sick, physically and morally spent,” he said, adding that he last saw her on February 4.Perez said three Americans captured in 2003 by the rebels were also faring badly, adding that they would likely remain in captivity unless a FARC leader who was jailed for 60 years in January gets his sentence reduced by US courts.Perez and the three other freed hostages – Gloria Polanco, Orlando Beltran and Jorge Gechem – were recovered Wednesday by Red Cross and Venezuelan officials.They were flown out of the southern Colombian jungle in two Venezuelan helicopters bearing the Red Cross symbol and later flown by plane to Caracas.The four had spent more than six years in the hands of the Marxist FARC, who constantly moved them around in tropical woodland to prevent their rescue by the Colombian military.It was the second such joint Red Cross-Venezuelan mission in as many months.In both cases, the FARC said it would only hand the hostages over to services commanded by leftwing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has rocky relations with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.