Colombian rebels free Spanish journalist, 2 others

BOGOTA – Leftist rebels have freed a Spanish journalist who went missing in a lawless region of Colombia, ending a weeklong saga that recalled some of the most-volatile days of a long-running conflict that many in the country had thought were behind it.

“Thank you to everyone who prayed for me,” Salud Hernandez-Mora said Friday in her first comments to a local radio upon being freed.

Rebels identifying themselves as members of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, handed her over to a delegation led by Ramon Catholic clergy in the volatile Catatumbo region. Hours later, two other journalists with Colombian network RCN were also freed by the rebels.

Hernandez-Mora said she was working on a story about coca growers in the town of El Tarra when, while on a lonely street, she was approached by a man on a motorcycle who took her equipment. He identified himself as a member of the ELN and promised to return her belongings in a couple of days.

Later she was invited to retrieve her belongings and went in search of the guerrillas on the back of a motorcycle. She said she was aware of the risks but thought it might result in an interview with a rebel leader. When she crossed paths with the rebels she was informed she was going to stay with them for a couple days and she knew right away that she was being held captive.

“I’ve always been imprudent, because a reporter needs to be imprudent or they’ll miss half the things,” Hernandez-Mora said in a press conference.

President Juan Manuel Santos celebrated Hernandez-Mora’s release from Catatumbo, where he had travelled earlier Friday to personally oversee the search efforts for the journalists.

Hernandez-Mora is a longtime correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and one of the country’s most-prominent columnists. Her disappearance last weekend while on assignment shocked Colombians who have experienced dramatic security gains in recent years as Colombia’s half-century conflict winds down.

Hernandez-Mora was last seen May 21 arguing with an unidentified man and then taking a motorcycle to an unknown destination. The two journalists from the RCN network went missing 48 hours later while covering the search for the Spanish journalist.

The Jamaica-sized Catatumbo region of northeastern Colombia is among the country’s poorest, most marginalized backwaters. It is a major coca-growing area and a corridor for cocaine smuggling to Venezuela, with the state able to maintain only a few militarized strongholds.

In addition to the ELN, remnants of the Popular Liberation Army are still active in the area as is the much-larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

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Joshua Goodman is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apjoshgoodman His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/joshua-goodman