BOGOTA, Colombia — Relatives of a boy at the center of a hostage saga awaited the results Wednesday of DNA tests to determine whether the child had been living in a foster home and not with the rebels who promised to free him.
The results will go a long way in divvying up blame for the failure of an operation led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to rescue three hostages, including the 3- year-old boy, held by Marxist guerrillas in Colombia’s eastern jungle.
The mission crumbled this week, with the rebels alleging military operations prevented the handover.
President Alvaro Uribe accused the guerrillas of not turning over the hostages because they didn’t have the boy, called Emmanuel.
On Wednesday, chief federal prosecutor Mario Iguaran confirmed that DNA tests had been performed in Caracas, Venezuela, on the mother and two brothers of Clara Rojas, a former Colombian vice presidential candidate held captive by the rebels.
Rojas is believed to have given birth to Emmanuel. The father is believed to be one of her guerrilla captors.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, had promised weeks ago to release Rojas, Emmanuel and politician Consuelo Gonzalez.
Iguaran said it would be at least 48 hours before the DNA results were compared with those from Juan David Gomez, an orphan in Bogota who matches the description of Emmanuel given by an escaped hostage — down to his maimed left arm.
“We’ve asked our forensic experts to devote their entire efforts, so that in a few days, we can determine the child’s identity,” Iguaran said.
If Uribe’s hypothesis turns out to be true and Emmanuel was living in a foster home, it would be an embarrassment for the FARC, exposing the hostages’ planned release as an elaborate ruse. Or it may signal disarray within the group, with members unable to keep track of hostages.
For the past week, the Rojas family has been holed up in a Caracas hotel waiting to be reunited with their daughter — unaware until Uribe’s announcement that they may have been living in the same city as their alleged grandchild.
The family did not comment Wednesday on the case.
Adding to the mystery surrounding the case, Iguaran said authorities were protecting a man who in 2005 turned over the boy, then malnourished and suffering from malaria, to child welfare agents in San Jose de Guaviare, a FARC stronghold.
The man, Jose Gomez, claimed to be the boy’s great uncle but has tried to reclaim him in recent days, saying he is his father.
Gomez has since changed his story, confessing to authorities that he has no blood relation to the child he said belonged to the FARC, El Tiempo newspaper reported.
The FARC has not commented on allegations that Emmanuel has been in Bogota for more than two years. Chavez has called Uribe’s theory a gambit to “dynamite” a mission that involved observers from five leftist governments.
