A former hostage has had an emotional reunion with her young son three years after she was forcibly separated from him by her captors. Clara Rojas cried and hugged her son Emmanuel at the state-run orphanage in Bogota where he has been growing up in ignorance of who his parents were. Ms Rojas, once a political aide to a Colombian presidential candidate, gave birth to Emmanuel in 2004, while she was enduring a six-year hostage ordeal at the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), a leftist guerrilla group.
The boy was fathered by one of the guerrillas. Eight months after his birth, however, he was taken away from his mother and handed to a peasant, who placed the baby in the hands of the Colombian social services.
Unaware of his true identity, the social workers placed him in a foster home in the Colombian capital, where the boy has remained for the last two years.
It was only after the Farc began negotiations with the Colombian authorities to free Ms Rojas that the child's identity emerged. Authorities discovered Emmanuel living in the foster home and guessed his parentage based on what little was known about him, including that he had a broken arm. DNA tests later confirmed their suspicions.
Child psychologists began to prepare the boy to meet his mother by showing him photographs of her, in order to ease his transition away from foster care.
Ms Rojas only discovered that Emmanuel was still alive two weeks ago, in a New Year’s Eve radio broadcast.
On Thursday the Farc handed over Ms Rojas and another kidnapped politician, former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez, to a Venezuelan-led delegation which then moved the hostages to Caracas.
With a photo of her son around her neck, Ms Rojas flew to Bogota and yesterday had a six hour meeting with the child. One photo released by Colombia's child welfare agency show the Emmanuel practising drawing with marker pens with his mother at his side. Another shows the pair with their arms wrapped round one another in a close hug.
Ms Rojas said that Emmanuel had made her a gift, and they were shown apparently exchanging a paper with artwork on it.
The story of Emmanuel has transfixed Colombia since a journalist first reported in a 2006 book that the child was born to Ms Rojas as the product of a relationship with one of her captors, reportedly a rank-and-file guerrilla named Rigo.
Ms Rojas has not revealed much about Emmanuel’s father. She said she does not know whether he is aware of Emmanuel and heard during her captivity that he may have been killed.
The Colombian Family Welfare Institute has said that it hopes to hand the boy over into Ms Rojas's permanent custody within days.
“Emmanuel has been transferred with his mother to a special location,” the institute director, Elvira Forero, told reporters. “They had a six-hour get-to-know session today in hopes of restoring family ties.”
Ms Forero pointed out that legal paperwork formalising the transfer still needed to be finished. Outside, police had blocked off the area as hundreds of locals flocked to the orphanage in an attempt to witness the event.
Even before the reunion Ms Rojas was visibly emotional as she returned to Bogota yesterday with some of her family. On the runway, she was greeted by Colombian government officials, including Ms Forero, and Luis Carlos Restrepo, President Alvaro Uribe’s peace commissioner.
“I am extremely moved to be back in my land. ... I feel like I’ve been reborn, I am back to life,” she said. But she added: “This is not a total happiness because many (hostages) remain and we are waiting for them.”
The Farc holds nearly 50 high profile captives including three US defence contractors and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, who was abducted alongside Ms Rojas and remains with the rebels.
Consuelo Gonzalez, 57, the other hostage to be freed by the guerrillas last Thursday, has asked Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who helped to negotiate her freedom, to lean on Farc leaders to abandon kidnapping as a method of warfare.
Ms Gonzalez, speaking on Mr Chavez’s weekly radio and television program “Hello Presidente”, urged him to help FARC leaders “understand that in a revolutionary struggle ... there should not kidnapping, because acts like those are an attack on human dignity."
Mr Chavez agreed, and addressing the Farc, said: “You should take into account Consuelo’s words, which I agree with."
On Saturday he urged European and Latin American governments to stop branding Colombia’s leftist guerrillas as terrorists, because they are, as he put it, “insurgent forces that have a political project”.
Mr Uribe quickly ruled out the option.
The Farc have been fighting to overturn the Colombian government for more than 40 years and still hold some 750 hostages in their jungle hideouts.
Late Sunday, the Colombian Navy announced that Farc rebels had taken hostage six more Colombian nationals in the town of Nuqui, in the west of the country. The captives were part of a tourist group visiting the area.
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