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Ex-hostages are 'living again'
11/01/2008 10:07 - (SA)
Caracas - Two women hostages who were released by Colombian rebels on Thursday were greeted with hugs, kisses and tears as they were reunited with their families after years of captivity in the jungle.
Clara Rojas and former legislator Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo landed in Caracas aboard a private jet just hours after Venezuelan helicopters plucked them from a secret location deep in the Colombian jungle.
Gonzalez and her daughters Patricia and Maria Fernanda hugged and cried on the tarmac in their first reunion since her abduction in 2001. The 57-year-old former lawmaker also held her two-year-old granddaughter for the first time.
"This is like living again," she said, holding the baby in her arms. "Sometimes I think it's a dream."
Rojas, 44, who had a son with one of her captors in 2004, two years after she was kidnapped, covered her 76-year-old mother Clara Gonzalez in kisses.
Three-year-old son
Rojas was looking forward to being reunited with her three-year-old son Emmanuel, who is in Colombian government care.
The rebels had taken the boy away from her when he was eight months old after she gave birth to him while in captivity.
"I'd like to pick him up in my arms right now," she said of the boy, whose father is a guerrilla fighter.
After taking the boy from Rojas, the rebels had handed Emmanuel to a caretaker in a village. But authorities took custody of him in 2006 after the sick boy was taken to a hospital.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had promised last month to release the two women and the boy to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But the rebels delayed the release.
Rojas and Gonzalez were part of a group of more than 40 hostages - including Betancourt and three US nationals - that the FARC want to exchange for 500 rebels jailed by the Colombian government.
The FARC, one of the world's longest running insurgencies, are believed to hold around 750 hostages.
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