The father of 4 children who survived 40 days in the jungle after a plane crash on 1 May in which the adults accompanying them died was arrested in Colombia. The man, Manuel Ranoque, is the natural father of the two younger ones (aged one and 4) and the adoptive father of the girls (aged 9 and 13). The official statements of the judiciary do not provide details on the reasons, but the reconstructions of the local press claim the allegations are of abuses.
After the tragedy, Ranoque had disputed their custody with the minors’ maternal grandparents. Her mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, had died four days after the plane crashed in the Amazon forest while covering the Caquetá-San José del Guaviare route, according to her eldest daughter. Since then the four have remained under the protection of the state agency for the protection of minors (the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, or ICBF). The grandfather claimed that the man beat his wife.
Before confirming the arrest, which took place yesterday, Ranoque himself had acknowledged the existence of problems in the family: in his opinion, it was a private matter, not to be exposed to “gossip”. When reporters asked him if he had ever attacked the woman, he acknowledged: “Verbally, suddenly, yes. Physically, very little, we clashed mainly in words ».
The father had participated in the search operations for the children in the jungle. The ICBF, reached by suspicions of abuse in the family, did not let him see the two eldest daughters, those born from Mucutuy’s previous marriage. When the 4 left the military hospital in Bogotá, where they were being treated, the institute placed them under his care.
“They are my children, not the president’s,” he vented in an interview with a newspaper, rejecting the accusations. “We will not expose the children: their story and their personal lives belong only to them,” said the director of the ICBF, Astrid Cáceres.
2023-08-12 12:41:20
#father #children #survived #days #jungle #arrested #Colombia
