Three American hostages rescued from leftist guerillas in Colombia arrived safely in Texas early yesterday and were taken to a military hospital, where they were expected to reunite with their families and undergo tests and treatment.
The US military contractors — Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell — were held for five years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Their plane landed at Lackland Air Force Base shortly after 11pm on Wednesday. The men then quickly boarded two helicopters headed to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where they landed a short time later.
PHOTO: EPA/US EMBASSY
Ingrid Betancourt and 11 Colombian police and soldiers were also freed in the same operation on Wednesday.
The Americans, all wearing olive green flight suits, exited the back end of an Air Force C-17 with little fanfare, surrounded by several other people.
Their drug-surveillance plane went down in the rebel-held Colombian jungle in February 2003.
PHOTO: AFP
The three were the longest-held American hostages in the world, the US Embassy in Bogota said.
They were employees of a Northrop Grumman Corp subsidiary that has supported Colombia’s fight against drugs and rebels.
Their families have complained publicly about what seemed to be the US government’s failure to act to win the men’s release.
LONG WAIT
“We didn’t know what the heck was going on,” Gonsalves’ father, George, told reporters. “I’m getting information from you guys.”
The Americans’ fate seemed particularly grim after “proof-of-life” images released last November showed them appearing haggard, even haunted, against a deep jungle background.
The three contractors and Betancourt were among a group of rebel-designated “political prisoners” whom the FARC planned to release only in exchange for hundreds of imprisoned rebels.
But every attempt at talking about a prisoner swap seemed to go nowhere.
Behind the scenes, however, Colombia’s armed forces were closing in on the rebels, with the help of billions of dollars in US military support.
RESCUE EFFORTS
The US and Colombian governments learned the hostages’ location “any number of times” and planned several rescue missions during their five years in captivity, but the difficulty of extracting them alive had prevented the missions from being carried out, said a US government official in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of intelligence matters.
Last month, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said soldiers had spotted the three men in the southern jungles, but they disappeared into the forest before the troops could attempt a rescue.
And after the men were freed on Wednesday, US Ambassador William Brownfield said US and Colombian forces cooperated closely on the rescue mission, including sharing intelligence, equipment, training advice and operational experience.
The Americans appeared healthy in a video shown on Colombian television, though Brownfield, who met with them at a Colombian military base, said two of the three were suffering from the jungle malady leishmaniasis and “looking forward to modern medical treatment.”
FAMILIES REACT
Gonsalves’ father George was mowing his yard when an excited neighbor relayed the news he had seen on television.
“I didn’t know how to stop my lawnmower,” he said. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it.”
“We’re still teary-eyed and not quite have our wits about us,” said Stansell’s stepmother, Lynne.
And Howes’ niece, Amanda Howes, said the rescue “redefines the word miracle.”
Congratulations poured in to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe from US President George W. Bush and other world leaders.
Republican Senator John McCain said Uribe had told him in advance of the rescue plans when he was in Colombia on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“It’s a very high-risk operation,” he said. “I congratulate President Uribe, the military and the nation of Colombia.”
Gonsalves’ father, who later got a phone call from the FBI confirming his son was free, expected an emotional family reunion, especially for his son’s three children, now teenagers.
“Think about your children if they don’t see you for a week a weekend or a month,” he said. “It’s five years pulled out of your life.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS