Colombia's largest rebel group has freed an army general and two others whose capture led President Juan Manuel Santos to break off peace talks.
Santos said in a message posted on Twitter Sunday that Gen. Ruben Alzate and two others taken captive by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have been handed over to a humanitarian mission led by the International Red Cross. He said the three are in good health and would be reunited with their families soon.
Santos had conditioned resumption of peace talks taking place in Cuba on the safe return of the general and his group — an army captain and military lawyer — as well as two rank-and-file soldiers taken during a firefight in a separate incident earlier this month.
Alzate, a U.S.-trained counterinsurgency expert, was snatched by the rebels 14 days ago while traveling on the remote Atrato River in western Colombia. He was the highest-ranking military officer ever seized by the rebel group in 50 years of insurgent fighting.
Now free, the 55-year-old Alzate will have to answer questions about why he apparently violated military protocol and ventured into rebel-dominated territory dressed as a civilian and without his normal security detail.
For its part, the FARC is calling for an immediate redesign of the two-year-old peace process, which it says is threatened by the government's refusal to accept a bilateral cease-fire. The FARC considers military personnel prisoners of war and has expressed disbelief that Santos' government, rather than recognize the FARC's goodwill offer to free the captives, has drawn closer to conservative critics who see it as being too lenient with the rebels.
"We can't let the peace process that has reached such an advanced state be subject to rushed, thoughtless actions that postpone our reconciliation," rebel leader known by his alias Ivan Marquez, a member of the FARC's ruling secretariat, said in a statement from Havana.
Fox News' "Antisemitism Exposed" newsletter brings you stories on the rising anti-Jewish prejudice across the U.S. and the world.