Colombian rebels free British, Israeli hostages
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Former hostages hug Monday after their release by Colombian rebels.
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SIERRA NEVADA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Colombian Marxist rebels on Monday released four Israeli hikers and a British backpacker they kidnapped 100 days ago, handing them over to a church-led humanitarian commission.
Israelis Benny Daniel, Ido Guy, Erez Altawil and Orpaz Ohayon and Briton Mark Henderson appeared in good health as they boarded helicopters in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains, according to a Reuters witness.
"It's something that we've all been waiting for, for three months. And now it's finally going to happen," Henderson told Reuters at the secret jungle handoff site.
"This is ... a massive Christmas present," Henderson's mother, Sharelle, told reporters outside the family's home in
North Yorkshire, England. "I don't know. Just sheer joy. Just magic," she said when asked how she felt at the news of his release.
The released hostages were being taken to Bogota, where relatives were waiting.
They were the last of a group of eight hostages to go free after being kidnapped at gunpoint by the National Liberation Army, or ELN, during an excursion to the jungle ruins of an ancient Indian city in the Colombian mountains on September 12.
Roman Catholic Church officials helped secure the release of the hostages.
The rebels released two of the hostages -- a Spaniard and a German -- in late November. The eighth member of the group, a 19-year-old Briton, escaped shortly after his kidnapping.
Daniel was covered with mosquito bites, but Guy said the group was generally in good health.
"All of us are OK. The three other Israelis, Erez, Benny, Opaz, they're all OK," Guy said. "I'm just waiting to hear that my family is OK, then it will be a really happy end."
The tourists ignored warnings against travel into Colombia, far and away the most likely country in the world to be kidnapped. Thousands of people are abducted here every year, most by Marxist rebels looking for ransom money to fund a 4-decade-old guerrilla war against the state.
But the kidnapping of these foreign hostages appeared to be political. The 5,000-member guerrilla army conditioned the release on an investigation, completed earlier this month, into human rights abuses in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Henderson said the hostages were told little during the ordeal, which included arduous treks through jungle and mountain terrain. But they were allowed to stay together.
"Luckily, the five of us have been able to keep each other going," he said. "If one of us is down, and someone else would be up, and, you know, it's the only way we could get through the days really.
"To just think that there is some hope, that there is some light at the end of the tunnel, that we are going to get out of this."
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Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
