Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

84 OUT OF CAPTIVITYtable. While this camp was clearly still up and running, the despeje hadbeen lifted in February of 2002, after the FARC carried out a series ofterrorist acts. The last straw came when they hijacked a commercial airlinerand took Jorge Eduardo Gechem Turbay, a Colombian Liberal Party(PLC) senator and chairman of the peace commission hostage. Beforethat, they had attacked several villages and cities, killing scores of civilians,and kidnapped several other government officials including CongresswomanConsuelo González de Perdomo, Congressman OrlandoBeltrán Cuellar, Senator Luis Eladio Pérez Bonilla, and CongressmanOscar Tulio Lizcano among many other lawmakers. In their boldestmove, they posed as police officers and kidnapped a dozen Colombianlegislators. The situation grew so bad that in December of 2001, theColombian legislature passed a law stating that kidnapped candidatescould still run for office even though they weren’t present. In the runup to the elections in March of 2002, the FARC kidnapped 840 peoplein 2001 and 183 persons in the first three months of 2002.Kidnapping for ransom was a booming business for the FARC,but it wasn’t the only terrorist tactic they employed. In an eighteenmonthperiod, the FARC also killed at least four hundred members ofthe Colombian military, starting in early 2001. Using car bombs andimprovised mortars, they wreaked havoc in a way they hadn’t done previously.During that same time, three Irish Republican Army memberswere arrested in Colombia and accused of training the FARC in bombmaking.All of these activities brought an end to the peace talks and the DMZ.Shortly after the talks fell apart in early 2002, the FARC responded bykidnapping Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt andseveral others while they were traveling in guerrilla territory. The heathad been turned up on the FARC ever since, with pressure comingfrom both domestic and international sources. When Álvaro Uriberan for president in 2002, his “democratic security” policy was at theheart of his platform. His father had been killed by the FARC and his