COLOMBIA: SOON TO BE RELEASED MILITARY AND POLICE HELD BY FARC REBELS IN MUDDY JUNGLE CAMPS FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS SPEAK ABOUT THEIR ORDEAL

Record ID: 588574

  • Title: COLOMBIA: SOON TO BE RELEASED MILITARY AND POLICE HELD BY FARC REBELS IN MUDDY JUNGLE CAMPS FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS SPEAK ABOUT THEIR ORDEAL
  • Date: 1st June 2001
  • Summary: JUNGLE IN SOUTHERN COLOMBIA (RECENT) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. MV/SV: REBELS SHOWING THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF PRISON CAMP (2 SHOTS) 0.15 2. VARIOUS OF POLICE AND MILITARY PRISONERS AT PRISON CAMP (4 SHOTS) 0.36 3. SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) OTONIEL TAMAYO SAYING, "You feel like a fat chicken. Just eating and sleeping locked in there. That's something frankly new. A real new life". 0.50 4. WIDE OF CAMP 0.57 5. VARIOUS OF PRISONERS PLAYING CARDS AND SITTING IN A TENT (2 SHOTS) 1.08 6. SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) OTONIEL TAMAYO SAYING, "You wake up and it's always the same, specially us that had a kind of two jails: During the day we were locked in a 20 x 20 mts space and at night we were in a much smaller place to sleep. You wake up and the first thing you see is the wire. At night you go to sleep and there's the wire. It damages you, psychologically." 1.40 7. SV: REBEL WATCHING PRISONERS BATHING AND SHAVING 1.47 8. VARIOUS OF PRISONERS BATHING AND SHAVING (3 SHOTS) 2.08 9. SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) PRISONER SAYING, "Bad...psychologically you get depressed. It is natural since you're away from your family. You are in subhuman conditions in a camp that looks like a chicken coop". 2.25 10. MV: PRISON CAMP COOKING AREA 2.32 11. SV: REBELS SERVING PRISONERS MEAL 2.40 12. SV: PRISONERS EATING 2.48 13. SV: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) REBEL SAYING, "We have been always responsible of taking care of them (The prisoners) in every moment, making sure they are alive and healthy with all the respect they deserve." 3.03 14. MV; PRISONERS SHOUTING AND CELEBRATING IMMINENT RELEASE 3.11 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 16th June 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JUNGLE IN SOUTHERN COLOMBIA
  • Country: Colombia
  • Reuters ID: LVA4ZXQTOUL2KM895PBJRLURO05J
  • Story Text: FARC'S military and police prisoners held in muddy
    jungle camps for more than two years, speak about their
    dramatic story.


    The camp is a collection of camouflaged canvas and
    black plastic rigged as tarpaulins against the wet season
    rain, protecting hammocks and makeshift beds put together on
    top of palm leaves above the mud.

    There are no walls to keep them in, just flimsy barriers made
    up of branches and leaves. But the prisoners, more than
    300 members of the army and the Colombian Police, were
    surrounded by guerrillas with M16 and AK-47 rifles and would
    not have known where to run if they had escaped into the
    snake-infested jungle.

    Otoniel Tamayo, shaven headed, slumps on his hammock in the
    jungle prison camp and hardly smiles when he sees his first
    visitors for more than three months. "You feel like a fat
    chicken. Just eating and sleeping locked in there. That's
    something frankly new. A real new life", he told Reuters,
    which was granted access last week to secret deep jungle sites
    where Colombia's Marxist FARC rebels were keeping hundreds of
    police and soldiers taken prisoner in combat.

    Tamayo was one of 43 men crammed into a temporary camp,
    all professional soldiers from a crack mobile battalion
    captured when the FARC attacked the town of El Billar 39
    months ago. The men have since been moved to a FARC base
    outside La Macarena, in southern Meta Province to await their
    release in a landmark agreement between the government and
    rebels.

    Tamayo was due to be included among about 300 soldiers and
    police to be released by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
    Colombia -- known by the Spanish initials FARC -- in a
    unilateral gesture on June 28.

    This follows the earlier release of 55 sick soldiers and
    police in return for 14 of the FARC guerrillas held in state
    jails.

    The releases, which will still leave roughly 50 non
    commissioned officers and officers in FARC hands, has been
    one of the few concrete achievements of the two-and-a-half
    year old peace talks which began when President Andres
    Pastrana handed the FARC control of a Switzerland-sized
    demilitarized zone in southern Colombia.


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