Colombian rebels release four oil workers

Four Chinese oil workers employed by a British company have been freed in the southern jungles where they were kidnapped 17 months ago.

Colombian rebels release four oil workers

Four Chinese oil workers employed by a British company have been freed in the southern jungles where they were kidnapped 17 months ago.

China’s ambassador said no ransom was ever sought for the men, three contractors and a translator.

They were the only foreigners known to still be held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Their release to the International Red Cross comes three days after the FARC and Colombia’s government began peace talks in Cuba that were partially conditioned on the rebels halting extortive kidnapping.

But Colombia’s defence minister called the rebels “mendacious and traitorous” yesterday for having claimed in September to no longer hold kidnap victims.

The rebels announced in February that they were halting all kidnapping and they insist they hold no more captives, neither “political prisoners” nor “economic” hostages.

The FARC has been fighting successive Colombian governments for 50 years and has used kidnapping for political leverage and as a financing source, at one point holding three US military contractors as well as several dozen prominent Colombian politicians.

Asked whether a ransom was paid for the men’s release, Chinese ambassador Wang Xiaoyuan told reporters in Bogota that “a ransom was not even demanded”. He said no one ever claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

He did not explain how the men’s release was accomplished.

Colombian officials said they had no doubt the FARC was behind the kidnapping and said the handover was arranged by the Chinese embassy and the International Red Cross

State police chief Colonel Carlos Vargas said the four were released in good shape in a rural area of San Vicente del Caguan, a FARC bastion.

The Colombia chief of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jordi Raich, said the four were freed by a small group of unarmed men in civilian clothing. He said the freed oil workers all appeared in good health though one appeared to have difficulty walking.

Images of them taken by a local TV network showed the men, bearded and with long hair, wearing hats in San Vicente early yesterday. One was in a wheelchair.

Employed by the British firm Emerald Energy, which is part of the China-based Sinochem Group, they were seized on June 8 last year while engaged in oil exploration work.

The men’s driver, who was released with their vehicle, said they were taken by at least seven FARC rebels.

Authorities identified the freed men as Tang Guofu, 28, Zhao Hongwei, 36, Jian Mingfu, 46, and Jiang Shan, 24. They said Mr Jiang was the translator.

The men were flown to Bogota on a plane chartered by the Chinese embassy. Mr Wang said they would fly home to China today.

Mr Wang has said the embassy had never received any proof-of-life evidence for the four men and that neither their relatives nor the company had contact with them.

The FARC said in early September, when it and the government announced the beginning of formal peace talks, that it no longer held any kidnap victims.

Yet the citizen’s group Pais Libre, which tracks kidnap victims, claims the rebels have kidnapped at least a dozen people this year and that dozens more abducted in previous years remain unaccounted for.

Defence minister Juan Carlos Pinzon accused the FARC of being “a mendacious and traitorous organisation” that “lies to the country and the international community”.

“We have already become accustomed to hearing a lie every time they pick up a microphone,” he told a gathering at a police operations centre in Tolima state yesterday, according to the ministry’s website.

Mr Pinzon used equally harsh rhetoric on Monday in reacting to the FARC’s announcement of a unilateral two-month ceasefire that began the following day.

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