“They were quite difficult days because there was a lot of horseback riding, we had to walk too much, go up and down many mountains looking for a way to keep me safe.”
This is how the father of soccer player Luis Díaz recalled his 12 days of kidnapping in his first press conference on Friday from his family home in Barrancas, a small town in northeastern Colombia where he was kidnapped and to which he returned. the day before after being liberated by the National Liberation Army guerrilla.
The walks in the Serranía, an area of mountain ranges where armed groups have been present for decades, lasted up to 12 hours.
“What I do know is that I was far from La Guajira (Colombian)… Of that I am sure, that I was close, very close to the border” with Venezuela, said Luis Manuel Díaz Jiménez, father of the Colombian national team soccer player. and the English club Liverpool.
According to Díaz Jiménez, the guerrilla did not demand money from his family to free him and in captivity they told him to “rest assured that nothing was going to happen to me, knowing that I was a very humble and loved person in my town because of the work I do,” he said in reference to the soccer school he leads.
Despite his kidnapping, Díaz Jiménez said he supported the continuation of dialogue with the guerrillas and advocated for the freedom of all those kidnapped so that like him they could return to the bosom of their family.
After his release, the Colombian government’s chief negotiator at the peace table with the ELN considered that the demand to stop kidnapping can accelerate the dialogue process, while ruling out the suspension of talks with the guerrilla.
“The unfortunate fact of kidnapping can become a positive element because it can accelerate this process. We can reach the end of the conflict during this government, we have to keep in mind that the methodology we are addressing is: agreement made, agreement that is implemented,” Otty Patiño, head of the government’s peace delegation, told The Associated Press on Friday. in a telephone interview.
The government of President Gustavo Petro, the first leftist in power, has been negotiating with the ELN since November 2022 and agreed on a bilateral ceasefire from August 2023. This is the sixth attempt by the Colombian State to achieve peace since 1964, when the group took up arms under the inspiration of the Cuban revolution.
The kidnapping of Díaz Jiménez at the hands of armed men in Barrancas, in the northeast of the country, left the dialogues with the guerrilla in a critical situation and caused the government demanded the elimination of kidnapping as a practice.
Patiño explained that they are aware of 24 complaints of kidnappings by the ELN since August 3, of which 19 have been established as “possibly true”, however, they do not know with certainty how many people were previously kidnapped and are in power. of the guerrilla.
The government, as Patiño explained, assumed that the end of the kidnapping was part of the current ceasefire agreement in which respect for International Humanitarian Law was expressed. The ELN, however, did not interpret it in the same way.
For the chief negotiator, abandoning the kidnapping is “a national and urgent demand” that becomes the first point to be discussed at the negotiation table.
“The practice of kidnapping has sunk entire processes, it has been an element that has generated immense hatred against other organizations such as the FARC, which have not yet been able to raise their heads on this issue even if they have signed the peace agreement,” said Patiño, co-founder of the extinct M-19 guerrilla, the same one in which Petro participated during his youth.
In Colombia, kidnapping has left its mark on society. Millions of Colombians came out to demonstrate in 2008 against the kidnappings committed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). At that time, images circulated of kidnapped people chained and locked up with barbed wire in the middle of the jungle. The FARC signed a historic peace agreement with the State in 2016 and are now held accountable for the kidnapping and other crimes before a peace court.
Patiño assured that the government delegation knew that the ELN had kidnapped Díaz Jiménez before the guerrilla admitted it and they only assumed responsibility after the government pointed them out as the perpetrators, beginning the liberation process.
The ELN did not allow the release of Díaz Jiménez until the troops of the Army will withdraw from the Serranía del Perijá, where he was held captive on the border with Venezuela. According to Patiño, the ELN did not take the soccer player’s father to Venezuela, but rather kept him in Colombian territory.
“The public forces deployed very quickly to take over the area and they were permanently in check. Of course, they acted prudently so that the pressure would not generate a tragic outcome,” said Patiño.
The government’s chief negotiator ruled out suspending the negotiation table with the ELN after the kidnapping and release of Díaz Jiménez.
“It would be a highly irresponsible act for us to leave the table. On the contrary, we must look at the table as an instrument to demand the end of the kidnapping and be spokespersons for that national cry,” he noted.
2023-11-11 02:25:40
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