Good News from Colombia

Thursday April 10, 2003 18:59

by joe ranii

A ray of hope for long-suffering Colombia as child is freed from the clutches of suspected FARC gangster kidnappers. This comes just a few days after last Sunday's nationwide demonstrations that called on the FARC and other criminal gangs to abandon their war against Colombia's children.

From AP:

Kidnapped Boy Rescued, Colombia Rejoices

By CESAR GARCIA, Associated Press Writer

BOGOTA, Colombia - Police burst into a Bogota home and rescued a 3-year-old boy from a dungeon-like hole, a week after he was kidnapped from his school bus, officials said Tuesday.

For a country mired in a civil war, beset by drug trafficking and the world's highest kidnapping rate and with so little to celebrate, the liberation Monday night of little Vitys Karanauskas was heralded by many in Colombia.

Vitys was returned to his mother in good health, though she said she almost didn't recognize him, because the kidnappers had dyed the lad's blond hair.

"When I saw him I didn't recognize him," his mother, Saule Karanauskas, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I only realized that it was him when he hugged me and kissed me."

Pictures of the toddler were splashed across newspapers and television news shows, printed on T-shirts protesters wore to marches and shown by his mother to anyone who would look.

Police arrested eight people. The kidnappers demanded a $170,000 ransom to release Vitys. Police said many people came forward offering information about the child, making the rescue possible.

"Faced with an act of this sort, which moved all of society, there were many people who thought they might have valuable information," said the nation's police chief, Gen. Teodoro Campo. "One of them led us to the results that we are all praising."

After the boy was abducted on April 1, his classmates held marches to press for his release. In interviews with local media, Karanauskas begged the kidnappers to treat her son well, even asking that they try to convince the boy it was all a game so he wouldn't be frightened.

The kidnappers snatched Vitys from a school bus in Villavicencio, 45 miles south of Bogota, then brought him to a house in the capital, and stuffed him into a dank cubbyhole underneath the floor.

More than 380 children were kidnapped in Colombia last year, many abducted by criminal gangs or leftist rebels seeking ransoms, according to the Colombian anti-kidnapping organization Free Country