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Colombian Right-wing Gunmen Free Over 200 Abducted Farm Workers
Over 200 agricultural workers kidnapped by right-wing paramilitaries in rural northeastern Colombian were set free, Colombian authorities confirmed Thursday.
A spokesman for the mayor of Villanueva town, where the largest mass kidnapping in Colombia's history took place on Tuesday, said that the farm workers abducted by the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) had been released.
The captives, including many children, were freed late Wednesday outside the town in Casanare province, some 140 kilometers east of Colombian capital, Bogota.
"The motives for the massive kidnapping aren't clear yet, but apparently it has something to do with a paramilitary's showing of force," said Attorney-General Alfonso Gomez Mendez.
The farm laborers were abducted by 80 suspected right-wing gunmen when being bused home from work on a palm plantation in Villanueva.
One of the victims said that the kidnappers identified themselves as members of the AUC, which has been fighting leftist guerrillas in the country for decades and is believed to have links with the military.
Colombia has been locked for around 37 years in a three-way civil war between leftist rebels, far-right paramilitaries and the armed forces, which has claimed about 200,000 lives. And the Adean country has the highest kidnap rate in the world, with an average of 3000 kidnaps taking place every year.
Leftist rebel groups, including the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), are arch enemies of paramilitary groups set up by local land lords to protect themselves from the leftist insurgency.
Tuesday's was the second mass abduction this year in Colombia. The country's second largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), seized 100 employees of U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum as they were bussed back from work at a jungle oil field in April. The ELN freed them all within a few days.
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