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.”
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
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including