The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, charged this Friday against the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla for the kidnapping of the father of soccer player Luis Díaz, Manuel ‘Mane’ Díaz. “The ELN today is responsible for the life of Luis Díaz’s father. He has done an act that goes against the peace process itself,” he declared from Washington (USA), where he had arrived a few hours before for a meeting of leaders of the continent.
In his first statement on the plagiarism, Petro expressed in statements to several media outlets his “deepest rejection” of the kidnapping and asked the guerrilla commanders with whom he has a negotiating table open to make an “immediate and deep” for bringing to reality what they have expressed: their intention to release the footballer’s father “as soon as possible.” He assured that this is fundamental “in order to build confidence in the possibilities of peace in Colombia.”
The ELN today is responsible for the life of Luis Díaz’s father. “I have to express my deepest rejection, not only for having kidnapped Luis’s father, but because in the development of events he has not been able to free him.” @petrogustavo pic.twitter.com/j7tXIgHmXh
— ÚltimaHoraCaracol (@UltimaHoraCR) November 3, 2023
Mane Díaz and his wife were kidnapped last Saturday, when a group of armed men approached them at a gas station in Barrancas – a town in La Guajira – and took them away. The soccer player’s mother was released that same day, in the midst of great national and international condemnation for this crime. However, the father has now been without freedom for almost a week, and since this Thursday the Government accused the ELN of being responsible. This Friday, Petro warned that “as time passes, the circumstances in which Mr. Díaz is placed become very dangerous,” who, according to the Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, would be in the Serranía del Perijá, a foothills of the Andes Mountains shared by Colombia and neighboring Venezuela.
In the last 24 hours, the kidnapping has become a state matter. The kidnapping and hostage situation occurs in the midst of parallel negotiations between the Government and the various armed groups that are still active in the country, within the framework of the total peace policy, one of the most emblematic and ambitious projects of the Administration. Petro.
On Wednesday night, Velásquez informed the president that the ELN, the largest and oldest group involved in those discussions, was responsible for the crime. This negotiation – the most advanced of all – achieved as its first great success a ceasefire that has been in force since August and runs until February. The kidnapping strains that agreement and the negotiation in general, which is why the head of the Government delegation at the table, Otty Patiño, traveled to Cuba since Wednesday to meet with the negotiators of that guerrilla. In the following hours, a crisis cabinet was formed in the Nariño Palace, which published a statement demanding the armed group immediately release Mane Díaz. However, the Government has not yet managed to recover it.
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