The father of Luis Díaz, Colombian football star for Liverpool, has been freed Thursday after being kidnapped by a guerrilla group, Colombian officials said.
“We report with joy the release of Don Luis Manuel Díaz,” said the Colombian government’s peace talks commission said in a statement Thursday morning. “We hope he soon regains his peace of mind, troubled by an act that should never have happened.”
It was not immediately clear what, if anything, would be exchanged for the elder Mr. Díaz’s freedom.
A helicopter with a handful of representatives from a local Catholic church and a United Nations mission in Colombia, together with a doctor, picked up Mr. Díaz, 56, in a rural area of Barrancas – which is located in La Guajira, a region of northern Colombia – and brought him to around 55 miles southeast of the city of Valledupar, government and emergency officials said.
“He was obviously emotional to be reunited with his family,” Carlos Ruiz Massieu, special representative of the UN Secretary-General in Colombia, told the New York Times. “He needs more in-depth medical testing after a situation like this, but overall he seemed fine.”
Both of Mr. Díaz’s parents were kidnapped on October 28 by gunmen at a gas station in their hometown of Barrancas. Her mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was rescued a few hours later, but her husband, Luis Manuel Díaz, remained prisoner.
Colombia’s national police and army mobilized to find Mr. Díaz amid fears that kidnappers may have taken him from Barrancas across the border into Venezuela.
Five days later, the National Liberation Army, a guerrilla group, took responsibility for the kidnapping. The group, known as the ELN, is the largest remaining rebel group in Colombia’s 60-year internal conflict and operates in the countryside.
In an ad published by local media outlets, José Manuel Martínez Quiroz, identified as the commander of the ELN’s northern front, said the group had commands with “economic missions and one of them” took the elderly Mr. Díaz, known as Mané. But it is said that he will be freed because he is a member of the family of “a great athlete loved by all Colombians”.
Although kidnappings for ransom and extortion have returned in recent years in Colombia after a hiatus, the ELN’s initial statement made no demand in exchange for Mr.’s release. Diaz.
Three days later, the ELN blamed the Colombian army for the delay. In a declarationthe group said Sunday that it was trying to avoid incidents with Colombian authorities, but that the area remains militarized with overpasses and troops arriving.
The situation, he said, “does not allow the implementation of the liberation plan quickly and safely.”
The next day, the announced by the military who was retreating from the region where Mr. Díaz was believed to be detained. But when he had not yet been released on Tuesday, Otty Patiño, Colombia’s chief negotiator in the peace talks with the ELN, he told reporters that there was “no excuse” for the delay. He said the guerrilla group was in contact with the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church.
The kidnapping captured the attention of a country of nearly 52 million people not only because soccer is the most popular sport but also because it stoked concerns about growing insecurity and whether the government was doing enough to stop it. In public appeals and marches in Mr. Díaz’s hometown, Colombians called for his father’s release.
The Colombian government, led by President Gustavo Petro, was negotiating a peace treaty with the ELN and a six-month ceasefire was to begin in August. But after the kidnapping of the elderly Mr. Díaz, Mr. Petro said that the ELN has committed an act that “goes against the peace process itself”.
After Mr. Díaz’s release, the Colombian peace commission negotiating with the ELN said the recent kidnapping had “thrown our talks into a critical situation” and called for all other people held captive to be released immediately.
ELN commander-in-chief Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, known by his nom de guerre Antonio García, said this in a statement last week, as reported by local relationshipsthat the kidnapping of the elderly Mr. Díaz had been “a mistake” and called his son, 26, a symbol for Colombia.
The younger Mr. Díaz, known as Lucho, shone for his country’s national team. He went from playing for his local indigenous team to bigger clubs in Colombia, eventually landing at Liverpool in a contract reportedly worth more than $60 million. Mr. Díaz’s father was a talented amateur player from Barrancas and coached his son.
The Liverpool player missed the first match after his father’s abduction but returned to action on Sunday. After scoring a late equalizer in a 1-1 draw against Luton, he lifted his shirt to reveal a T-shirt reading “Freedom for Papa” in Spanish.
After the match, he asked for his father’s release.
“Every second, every minute, our anguish grows” he wrote in a statement. “My mother, my brothers and I are desperate, anguished and without words to describe what we are feeling. This suffering will only end when we get him home.”
On Thursday, Mr. Díaz received his wish.
