MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Farc hostage Lizcano escapes with guard after 8 years

Former hostage Oscar Lizcano at a military base in Cali

A Colombian congressman held hostage by Marxist guerrillas for eight years escaped through the jungle with one of his captors in another blow to Latin America's oldest insurgency.

Wearing a tattered, black T-shirt and sporting a tangled grey beard, Óscar Lizcano, 62, and the rebel leader known by the alias Isaza walked for three days before reaching an army post where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) rebel surrendered yesterday. "My legs are swollen," Dr Lizcano told reporters, as he slumped exhausted in a chair, his voice weak after he was forbidden to talk for so long by his captors. The Colombian authorities, who claimed initially to have rescued Dr Lizcano in a military operation, conceded that he had done all the work himself. "He fled and the two went looking for authorities, trekked across the jungle day and night for three days, until this morning they stumbled upon the army's 14th Brigade. That's when the release, the rescue of Dr Lizcano took place," Juan Manuel Santos, the Defence Minister, said. Martha de Lizcano, the wife of Dr Lizcano, wept upon being told of the news. "This nightmare is coming to an end. It's been eight years of great suffering," she said. Dr Lizcano, an economist, was taken to Cali for a medical examination, said César Velásquez, a spokesman for the President's office. He was abducted on August 5, 2000, in the village of Riosucio in Caldas province, northwest of the capital, Bogotá. At the time of his kidnapping he was the representative in Congress for the Conservative Party. President Uribe said that Isaza would be rewarded and helped to move to France. In April, Farc released a video proving that Dr Lizcano was still alive. He pleaded with President Chávez of Venezuela to mediate to do "the utmost to get us out of here because we are rotting in the jungle". The escape of Dr Lizcano came after Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician, three Americans and a group of other hostages were rescued in a surprise military operation in July. In December Clara Rojas, Ms Betancourt's former campaign manager, who had a child with a guerrilla while in captivity, was rescued by the army after five years as a hostage. Farc was once a powerful rebel army that controlled large areas of the country. It has at least 20 politicians, police officers and soldiers, some of whom have been held for more than a decade. The organisation has been weakened seriously in the past two years by a military that has been fortified and become more professional and agile under Mr Uribe, thanks largely to US training, advice and intelligence-gathering. The President received billions of dollars in US military aid in the battle against Farc and the cocaine trade that has helped to fuel the four-decade conflict in Colombia.