tagged w/ Oscar Lizcano
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To survive his eight years in jungle captivity, Oscar Lizcano drank saltwater, ate mice and talked to trees, the Colombian ex-lawmaker revealed Thursday after a harrowing escape from FARC rebels.
Mr Lizcano recounted his extraordinary ordeal at a press conference, recalling that the poems of Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti also helped maintain his sanity amid the overwhelming solitude before he escaped with the aid of one of his captors.
Mr Lizcano reached freedom Sunday after an arduous three day trek through thick jungle, accompanied by Wilson Bueno, alias "Isaza," to whom the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia had entrusted the hostage's safekeeping.
An army siege had put a choke hold on the FARC, preventing much-needed food from reaching guerrillas and hostages alike in the rebel camps located in the jungles of Choco department in Colombia's northwest.
The rebels moved from place to place to elude the encroaching army, Lizcano said.
"On these marches, we had saltwater for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which made me vomit," a gaunt-looking Mr Lizcano, a former member of the Lower House, said in Cali where he was recuperating in hospital.
"Some of the guerrillas... caught some mice, took off their heads and tails and ate them. There was one guerrilla who at night would put a cooked mouse in my boot and I would eat it."
Such deliveries of food were made in secret because rebels were prohibited from communicating with hostages, said the 63-year-old Mr Lizcano, who stressed that ever since gaining his freedom he has only wanted to "live minute by minute."
To keep his wits about him, and in the face of a ban against talking with his captors, Mr Lizcano managed to obtain a book of Benedetti poems and gave "lectures" to the trees, which he baptized with names as if they were students.
"It was the only thing that gave me breath, and helped me endure the solitude," a teary-eyed Mr Lizcano said, his voice cracking.
He thanked Isaza, stressing it was the insurgent who took the "unilateral" decision to escape with Mr Lizcano and end the hunger brought on by the army siege.
"Some 30 guerrillas chased us like bloodhounds," the ex-hostage said of their three-day escape, adding that Isaza carried him, exhausted and injured, on his back on the final day.
Their escape was conducted at night under a veil of darkness, and they hid and rested during the day, he said.
Colombia's Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said the army had been planning a rescue operation for five months in the region which borders Panama, and had the area cordoned off, when the rebel defector and Lizcano walked into view Sunday.
Mr Lizcano called on the Government not to abandon the remaining hostages, who he said were "rotting" in the jungle.
He was one of a group of 29 high-profile abductees (three politicians and 26 soldiers and police) whom the FARC have sought to swap for about 500 of their colleagues in arms who are behind bars.
The group also included French-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate and Colombia's best-known captive, who was freed by the military nearly four months ago after six years in captivity.
President Alvaro Uribe said Sunday that Paris had agreed to his Government's request to grant asylum to Isaza, who would also receive a reward for laying down arms.
Mr Lizcano said he believed dialogue was the way to end the decades-old battle against the FARC, as "I don't believe there can be a total military defeat of the guerrillas." To survive his eight years in jungle captivity, Oscar Lizcano drank saltwater, ate... more
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Military operation frees former congressman from 'great suffering'
Soldiers on Sunday freed a Colombian lawmaker who'd been held by leftist guerrillas for eight years in the first such hostage rescue since the July liberation of Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors.
Oscar Tulio Lizcano, 62, was rescued in an early morning raid in the remote jungle of western province of Choco, said Henry Murillo, the No. 2 official in Caldas province, where the lawmaker was originally abducted.
Details of the rescue from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America's last remaining major rebel army, were promised in a news conference scheduled for later Sunday by Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.
Military operation frees former congressman from 'great suffering'... more
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