Colombia - New Footage of Hostage Rescue | War and Peace

Colombia - New Footage of Hostage Rescue

Published October 21, 2008 @ 10:48AM PT

[New video of Colombian hostage rescue - Footage from Noticias Uno]

Last week, I wrote a post about how the Colombian military impersonated the Red Cross when rescuing fourteen hostages back in July, and the possibility that this violated the Geneva Conventions. Which, in turn, has serious implications for the safety and security of aid workers.

Yesterday, a Colombian TV station broadcast new footage of the rescue, taken by one of the FARC guerrillas. The video is above. (Start watching at around 40 seconds.)

According to the Colombia blog at the Center for International Policy (an excellent source for Colombia-related news):

The video adds some new elements to the story. It now appears that the soldier illegally disguised as a Red Cross official was in fact the first to approach, and speak with, the guerrillas, pretending not to speak good Spanish. In an interesting final touch, the delegation left behind a gift for the guerrilla captors: two cases of beer.

At the end of the video, the guerrilla narrator says, “The comrade has gone” - probably referring to one of the captors who accompanied the hostages.

Then one hear’s a woman’s voice off camera, referring to the beer: "Do you know what the guy from the … what’s it called? … the Red Cross said to me? ‘Take care of it, it’s a good gift.'"

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Author

Michael has worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, across east and central Africa, and Iraq. Prior to going overseas, he worked on a project providing assistance to the United Nations on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.