Freed Colombian hostage eager to meet son

CARACAS, Venezuela — Clara Rojas, one of two hostages freed after years held captive by Colombian rebels, gave birth to her son nearly four years ago by kitchen-knife Caesarean and has not seen him since he was taken from the jungle at 8 months old.

"Very soon I will meet him, and little by little we'll start sharing what for us is a rebirth," Rojas told reporters late Friday in Caracas, where she and fellow former captive Consuelo Gonzalez met their families and thanked Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for engineering their release.

Long treks through the forest, prisoners held in chains, and terrifying aerial raids also marked some six years in captivity. Wearing a photo of her son around her neck, Rojas said it wasn't until two weeks ago that she learned what had happened to 3-year-old Emmanuel, hearing on the radio that he was in a foster home in Bogota.

The hand-over of Rojas and Gonzalez was the most important hostage release in the Colombian conflict since 2001, when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, freed about 300 soldiers and police officers.

Rojas — an aide to former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who remains in captivity — spoke in general terms about the rebel who fathered her son, reportedly a rank-and-file guerrilla named Rigo.

"I never saw the boy's father again," she said in one Colombian radio interview.

"I don't have any information about the boy's father. What's more, I don't have any idea if he even knows he's the boy's father," Rojas told reporters at a news conference, holding the hand of her elderly mother. "The information I have is that he could even have died. I don't have any confirmation."

After she learned she was pregnant, Rojas shared the news with her fellow captives — "this happiness but also of course the anxiety."

She was later separated from the rest and moved to a tent where she waited out the final months alone, sleeping on a cot and trying to "have the peace to face the situation of the birth."

She asked for a doctor, but none came. When the contractions came in April 2004, it was the start of a full day of difficult labor, and Rojas said the rebels, including a male nurse who was in charge, explained she would need a Caesarian because there were risks to the baby and her own life.

"And I said, well, I'll put it in the hands of God," Rojas said. When she awoke from the anesthesia, one of the rebels told her: "Clara, don't move. . . . It's a boy."

She decided to name him Emmanuel, "because he was a gift from God." The boy suffered a broken arm at birth when he was pulled out by the rebel nurse, Rojas said.

Months later, the guerrillas helped carry the infant through the forest and at one point across a wide river, she said.

When the boy was 8 months old, Rojas said, she allowed the rebels to take him away for two weeks to receive treatment for the broken arm and leishmaniasis, a common parasite malady.

"I didn't hear any news of the boy again until Dec. 31," she said. Listening to the radio that day, she heard Colombian President Alvaro Uribe say in a speech that the child was no longer with Rojas' captors.

DNA tests later confirmed the boy had been living in a Bogota foster home for more than two years under a different name.

Elvira Forero, head of Colombia's child welfare agency, is ready to hand over Emmanuel "whenever she decides she's ready." Rojas said she will return to Bogota in coming days.

In the forest, radio broadcasts were one of the few comforts for the captives, Rojas said. She recalled weeping with joy one Christmas when she heard her brother wish her the best on a program for hostages' relatives.

Gonzalez, a former congresswoman, told Colombia's Caracol Radio that some hostages would sleep, bathe and wash their clothes chained by the neck.

She said her daily routine of sleeping on the jungle floor and surviving on rice and beans was interrupted occasionally by aerial raids. "When bombs are falling all around you, it's when you really understand the horror of war," she said.

Both Rojas and Gonzalez said their captors often said little to them — at best a few encouraging words at times. Rojas was kidnapped in February 2002 along with Betancourt, who was campaigning for the presidency.

Rojas said the rebels put her and Betancourt in chains after they tried to escape once but later unshackled them. The two were separated three years ago, and Rojas has not seen Betancourt since.

Gonzalez triumphantly held in her arms a 2-year-old granddaughter she was meeting for the first time. She said she plans to dedicate herself to the release of remaining hostages.