Colombia violence: Kidnapped boy, 11, released after 18 days
An 11-year-old Colombian boy has been reunited with his family 18 days after he was kidnapped by members of a dissident rebel group. Five armed men wearing balaclavas stormed the boy's home in a rural area of Valle del Cauca province on 3 May and seized him and a domestic employee.They released the employee soon after but held the boy in a shack at a remote location for almost three weeks until they agreed his freedom in negotiations with Colombia's ombudsman's office, the Red Cross and the Catholic Church. Rebel groups in Colombia are notorious for forcibly recruiting children but the boy's abduction from his home at gunpoint nevertheless shocked locals.
Police said that the kidnappers were part of the Frente Jaime Martínez, an off-shoot of the Farc rebel group that continued fighting after Farc agreed a 2016 peace deal.The boy's mother described his release as "a miracle", adding that the weeks he had been in captivity had been "horrible, a nightmare".Many dissident rebel groups such as the Frente Jaime Martínez finance themselves through extortion and kidnappings for ransom, as well as drug trafficking. The commander of the regional police force, Brigadier General Carlos Oviedo, said the boy's stepfather had been the real target of the kidnappers, but that they had seized the boy when they found that the stepfather was not at home.The stepfather, a local merchant, told local media that he was not involved in any illicit business and said he did not know why he had been targeted.It is not clear if a ransom was paid for the boy's release.His stepfather said the boy had told the family that he had been shackled for the first four days of his captivity but was in good health. His mother said that her son appeared anxious and that he had bitten his fingernails down. He was taken to the local hospital for examination. The mayor of Jamundí, the town where the family lives, thanked the local community "for not giving up" and for holding rallies demanding the boy's release. Colombia's vice-president, Francia Márquez, had also demanded that the boy be freed. "Ife is sacred and the freedom of any human being is non-negotiable, less so when it's that of a child," she wrote in a statement.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
8 hours ago
- BBC News
Searching for answers about US-backed aid agency in Gaza
The road to Dover, Delaware, is lined with barns and giant wheat fields and all the other signs of American on this journey, the scene only highlights the devastating contrast between peace and driving here because in this rural heartland lie clues to what's behind a highly contested development thousands of miles away on the ground in new US- and Israeli-backed entity created to feed the territory, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), was registered here in Delaware two weeks after US President Donald Trump took is known about the group, which has been at the centre of global headlines amid scenes of chaos and deadly incidents nearly every day as desperate Palestinians have tried to reach its sites. Eyewitnesses recently reported Israeli forces firing on crowds heading to an aid site. Israel says it is investigating while also accusing Hamas of trying to sabotage the GHF said on Thursday that eight of its local Palestinian workers were killed when Hamas attacked one of their in the latest deadly incident, at least 15 Palestinians were killed on Saturday by Israeli fire, local hospitals said. The Israeli military said troops fired warning shots at a group they believed posed a potential threat, and an aircraft struck one person who moved towards killed by Israeli fire near Gaza aid site, say hospitalsVideo shows Palestinians climbing fence and rushing to aid site On our journey in Delaware to find out more about the GHF, the search yields many clues but few definitive established itself saying it intended to feed civilians in Gaza, where the United Nations has said more than two million people are at risk of foundation, which uses armed American security contractors, bypasses the UN as the main supplier of aid in see the GHF as enabling a plan by the Israeli government to displace Palestinians south into smaller areas of Israel - which has long sought to remove the UN as the major humanitarian provider to Palestinians - argues the alternative system was needed to stop Hamas stealing denies that, while the posture of the previous US administration of President Joe Biden was that if supplies were being diverted, it was not at any scale that possibly could justify blockading aid to March, Israel cut off all food and other aid supplies to Gaza as it resumed its war against Hamas following a two-month ceasefire. Israel said the step, which has been widely condemned, was taken to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining UN and aid groups demanded access, while international condemnation of Israel grew. In the midst of this standoff emerged the GHF, promoted by Israel and championed by the Trump virtually nothing was known about its provenance and, crucially, who was funding early May, a 14-page leaked document circulated among aid groups and set out the concept behind GHF - to provide aid to Palestinians from several collection super-hubs in Gaza, secured by armed private contractors and ultimately, beyond their perimeter, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).The initiative appeared to be designed to bypass the UN as the major the executives or advisers listed in the document were Nate Mook, a former boss of the charity World Central Kitchen; David Beasley, a former World Food Program chief (listed as "to be finalized"); and Jake Wood, a US Marine Corps veteran and disaster-response also listed a retired US lieutenant-general on its advisory by phoning around those who knew some of the background, it became clear that neither Mr Mook nor Mr Beasley was in fact part of the document appeared to be a wish list to try to build support and possibly private donations for the fund. Questions unanswered There were no clues as to the authorship of the leaked text, however. So who was really running the GHF?Jake Wood did indeed become the executive director, but within a fortnight he resigned saying the project breached the humanitarian principles of "humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence", which he said he would not our search to find out more, we pull up in Dover's quaint downtown. A woman in costume is giving a guided history tour. This is a place you come to hear about wars past not drive to the address listed in a public records search for the GHF. It's a red brick building with wooden doors and no doorbell. Inside, in a corridor, two women emerge from an office. They try to assist but say they can't help because they don't know anything specifically about address is in fact an agent for incorporating firms - registering them legally - in Delaware, a state known for a less intrusive approach to company transparency.I ask the women why an organisation would have its registered address here, but not be based here."So they're not bothered," says one with a back on the road, and I send some messages to the spokesman of the GHF, a newly appointed role that is being undertaken by a US-based public relations professional.I've been asking for days for an on-the-record interview with him, or the new executive director. I've asked for confirmation about who is funding GHF and who else is on the board, but nothing is an apparent lack of transparency for a humanitarian group is a "critical" issue, says Bill Deere, Washington DC office director for the UN's Palestinian refugee agency agency has been the core focus of the Israeli government's attempts to sever the relationship between the UN and Gaza's population, and it was this year banned from operating in Deere says: "For folks who like or dislike the UN and its agencies, you can always track our money."We're very transparent about where our funding comes from. By contrast… no-one really knows very much about this [GHF]." Across the front lines He describes the new aid project as "a Hunger Games distribution network", a reference to a dystopian fiction Deere is calling for the UN to be allowed fully back into Gaza to get food aid to Palestinians again professionally, and at scale."I do not know, I cannot fathom, as a UN employee or even as an American, how the world can accept this situation," he UN agencies and aid groups have escalated their criticism of the GHF believe the GHF is breaching the fundamental humanitarian principle of other words, they argue that if aid providers working in a conflict are seen as taking a side, those workers and the aid recipients risk becoming say the GHF has militarised the aid supply, endangering civilians who also have to cross front lines to get to the distribution sites, while disadvantaging the weak and its part, Israel alleges that UNWRA is not neutral. Last year, after accusations made by Israel, the UN fired nine staff out of UNRWA's 17,000-strong workforce, saying they may have been involved in the October 7 attacks. It didn't specify what they were accused of, while UNRWA says the initial claims have still not been proven. In the Gaza war, according to the agency, at least 310 UNRWA workers have been killed, the vast majority of them by the Israeli army.I press Bill Deere, of UNRWA, on Israel and GHF's criticism, that Hamas was diverting aid under the UN system. He says Israel has never offered proof."This is just a made-up excuse in order to create a system that looks like it's helping people without actually helping people," he we continue our search to find out more about GHF, I make my way to the official Delaware state building that holds company team has requested GHF's certificate of incorporation and other linked documents. A woman who works in the records office hands us three pages stapled reveal only the address of the agents we've just visited, and that the GHF changed its name from the "Global Humanitarian Fund" to the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" on 28 signed "Loik Henderson, President".According to the leaked May document, Mr Henderson is a lawyer "with decades of experience [including] Fortune 500 companies". We try to reach him by phone, but get no next day, a statement arrives from a GHF email address, which isn't attributed to any named press officer and contains no numbers to reach its media says the foundation has given out 19 lorry loads of food that day. The UN system was getting in 600 per day during the ceasefire. For a population of more than two million people, the current daily amount is clearly nowhere near enough; borne out by images of an apocalyptic scene as desperate crowds have descended from barren, sandy dunes over fences into one aid site this email contains a section entitled "inaccurate news reporting", having earlier in the week heavily criticised media organisations for "fabricated and exaggerated narratives". The foundation has distanced itself from the series of deadly incidents, saying no-one was shot at its executive director John Acree is quoted in the email as saying the foundation has so far given out 8.5m meals "without incident". The BBC can't verify the accuracy of GHF's measure for the number of meals in each of its food Saturday, the GHF controversy deepened as one of the world's top consulting firms, Boston Consulting Group, said it had sacked two partners for their role in helping to set up the chief executive apologised to staff saying the group was "shocked and outraged" that the two senior employees had carried out unauthorised work on the de Waal, an expert in famine and aid supply in war at Tufts University in Massachusetts, likens the concept currently being rolled out in Gaza to colonial-era counter-insurgency attempts."The thinking of the military as they mount operations like this is that they will be able to deny all resources to an insurgent group, forcing its members to surrender through hunger and forcing a civilian population to turn against it," he strongly rejects any suggestion it uses hunger as a weapon of war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said Israel "must avoid famine [in Gaza], both for practical reasons and diplomatic ones".Israel has also rejected mounting international criticism of the GHF project. Desperate for food And it has denied allegations in the Israeli media, and raised by opposition leader Yair Lapid, that the Israeli government has secretly funded office says Israel and the US are working in co-ordination "to cut off aid from reaching Hamas", as he escalates Israel's offensive in Gaza, arguing that "military pressure" will help force Hamas to release the hostages it adds that "Israel does not fund the humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip".The US government has also said it is not funding the on the road, we try to reach the GHF executive director John month, contacted via LinkedIn, he told me he would not be doing interviews, but did later put me in touch with the foundation's new spokesman, who has so far declined any on-the-record Wednesday last week, a woman at Mr Acree's home told me he was currently in Tel foundation also emailed a press release saying that it had appointed an executive chairman, Reverend Johnnie Moore, a Christian evangelical preacher and public relations Moore is a strong supporter of Israel and was among President Trump's evangelical "advisory board" of faith leaders who laid hands on the president and prayed for him in the Oval a Fox News website article, Mr Moore launched a scathing attack on the UN system."Activists disguised as humanitarians clutch their pearls and rush out press releases in support of these failed systems," said Mr Moore."They keep spreading with no scrutiny the profane lies of Hamas."We return to Washington DC after our searches in phones buzzes with a message from a colleague saying thousands of hungry Palestinians have looted an aid truck in central Gaza, as desperation over food shortages the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation released videos of Palestinians thanking President Trump behind the wire fences of its distribution has become a main ingredient of Gaza's aid - but we find few real answers about who's really behind reporting by Alex Lederman
Daily Mail
17 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Four migrants escape from New Jersey ICE detention center
Four migrants escaped a ICE detention center in New Jersey during a riot over conditions at the facility. All four men are on the run after they broke out of the Delaney Hall Detention Facility on Thursday, and federal authorities have offered up a $10,000 reward for information leading to their capture. The illegal immigrants were first identified by the New York Post as Franklin Norberto Bautista-Reyes and Joel Enrique Sandoval-Lopez, both of Honduras, and Joan Sebastian Castaneda-Lozada and Andres Pineda-Mogollon, both of Colombia. Bautista-Reyes illegally entered the US in 2021 and was arrested in May on charges of aggravated assault, attempt to cause bodily injury, terroristic threats, and possession of a weapon for unlawful purposes. Sandoval-Lopez came to the US illegally in 2019 when he was still a minor. He was first arrested in October 2024 for unlawful possession of a handgun and then again in February 2025 for aggravated assault. Castaneda-Lozada arrived in the US in 2022 and was taken into custody by a local state police department on suspicion of burglary, theft, and conspiracy to commit burglary. Pineda-Mogollon crossed the border in 2023 and overstayed a tourist visa. He was first arrested in April by New York City police for petit larceny. A month later, he was arrested in New Jersey for residential burglary, conspiracy residential burglary, and possession of burglary tools. The Department of Homeland Security contradicted reporting from multiple local outlets that claimed these men were able to slink away during revolt staged by 50 detainees. 'Contrary to current reporting, there has been no widespread unrest at the Delaney Hall Detention facility,' a DHS spokesperson said. A report from said that the detainees pushed down a wall of dormitory room inside the facility. They broke through a wall - described as 'drywall with a mesh interior - in a dorm unit that led to an exterior wall and into a parking lot, according to New Jersey Senator Andy Kim. The Democrat said he had been briefed by the detention center's administrators as well as ICE leadership, ABC7 reported. At a Friday press conference, Kim said the incident was an example of 'the incompetence and the recklessness of all this.' He also revealed that the facility is undergoing a security review and the breach itself will be investigated. There will be 'major detainee movements out of this facility,' Kim added. That process appeared to begin late Friday afternoon, when protestors were seen holding onto the buses transporting migrants away from the center. Eventually, these people were ripped from the buses by ICE agents. On Thursday night, the night of the jailbreak, dozens of protestors showed up to block any vehicles from entering or exiting the facility. They chanted slogans and criticized the alleged poor conditions inside the facility. Detainees reported there was a lack of food and that meals were being delivered hours behind schedule. One woman whose husband was detained inside the center told CBS New York that detainees hadn't been fed for about 20 hours, only to be given a small amount of food. This, according to reports, caused a fight between them and the guards, which led to the detainees pushing down a weak wall inside the facility. 'We are now going to try to get full confirmation from ICE headquarters about what is the future of this facility and whether or not they're going to shut it down,' Kim said. Immigration groups also claimed there has been 'insufficient or frozen food, boiling water coming from pipes, and multiple cancelled visitation hours.' Delaney Hall is run by GEO Group, one of the nation's largest private prison contractors. The facility, following a refurbishment, reopened in May after GEO Group inked a $60 million deal with the Trump administration, according to the Guardian . As part of that deal, the company is allowed to hold 1,000 people at a time at Delaney Hall. Delaney Hall's reopening was a subject of controversy for local politicians, who claimed it doesn't hold the correct work permits or a valid certificate of occupancy. GEO Group has denied this. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democratic Representative, visited the center during its reopening last month and called for it to be shut down. She was arrested for trespassing and was later charged with assaulting an officer by acting New Jersey US Attorney Alina Habba's office. Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, was with McIver and other elected officials. He too was arrested but was released the same day. Charges against him were dropped. In a statement Friday, Baraka slammed the federal government as irresponsible and reckless. 'This incident is yet another outrageous validation of the negative consequences of a federal government that believes it is above the prudence and practicality of working within legal parameters, and encourages reckless operations of its collaborators,' he said. Earlier, he said he was concerned about reports of guards within Delaney Hall 'withholding food' and their alleged 'poor treatment' of inmates.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Four dangerous migrants ESCAPE from New Jersey ICE detention center after woke protesters spark chaos
Four migrants escaped a ICE detention center in New Jersey during a riot over conditions at the facility. All four men are on the run after they broke out of the Delaney Hall Detention Facility on Thursday, and federal authorities have offered up a $10,000 reward for information leading to their capture. The illegal immigrants were first identified by the New York Post as Franklin Norberto Bautista-Reyes and Joel Enrique Sandoval-Lopez, both of Honduras, and Joan Sebastian Castaneda-Lozada and Andres Pineda-Mogollon, both of Colombia. Bautista-Reyes illegally entered the US in 2021 and was arrested in May on charges of aggravated assault, attempt to cause bodily injury, terroristic threats, and possession of a weapon for unlawful purposes. Sandoval-Lopez came to the US illegally in 2019 when he was still a minor. He was first arrested in October 2024 for unlawful possession of a handgun and then again in February 2025 for aggravated assault. Castaneda-Lozada arrived in the US in 2022 and was taken into custody by a local state police department on suspicion of burglary, theft, and conspiracy to commit burglary. Pineda-Mogollon crossed the border in 2023 and overstayed a tourist visa. He was first arrested in April by New York City police for petit larceny. A month later, he was arrested in New Jersey for residential burglary, conspiracy residential burglary, and possession of burglary tools. The Department of Homeland Security contradicted reporting from multiple local outlets that claimed these men were able to slink away during revolt staged by 50 detainees. The above four men, all illegal migrants, broke out of Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey on Thursday after detainees were able to push down a weak wall inside that let to an outdoor parking lot 'Contrary to current reporting, there has been no widespread unrest at the Delaney Hall Detention facility,' a DHS spokesperson said. A report from said that the detainees pushed down a wall of dormitory room inside the facility. They broke through a wall - described as 'drywall with a mesh interior - in a dorm unit that led to an exterior wall and into a parking lot, according to New Jersey Senator Andy Kim. The Democrat said he had been briefed by the detention center's administrators as well as ICE leadership, ABC7 reported. At a Friday press conference, Kim said the incident was an example of 'the incompetence and the recklessness of all this.' He also revealed that the facility is undergoing a security review and the breach itself will be investigated. There will be 'major detainee movements out of this facility,' Kim added. That process appeared to begin late Friday afternoon, when protestors were seen holding onto the buses transporting migrants away from the center. Eventually, these people were ripped from the buses by ICE agents. On Thursday night, the night of the jailbreak, dozens of protestors showed up to block any vehicles from entering or exiting the facility. They chanted slogans and criticized the alleged poor conditions inside the facility. Detainees reported there was a lack of food and that meals were being delivered hours behind schedule. One woman whose husband was detained inside the center told CBS New York that detainees hadn't been fed for about 20 hours, only to be given a small amount of food. This, according to reports, caused a fight between them and the guards, which led to the detainees pushing down a weak wall inside the facility. 'We are now going to try to get full confirmation from ICE headquarters about what is the future of this facility and whether or not they're going to shut it down,' Kim said. Immigration groups also claimed there has been 'insufficient or frozen food, boiling water coming from pipes, and multiple cancelled visitation hours.' Delaney Hall is run by GEO Group, one of the nation's largest private prison contractors. The facility, following a refurbishment, reopened in May after GEO Group inked a $60 million deal with the Trump administration, according to the Guardian. As part of that deal, the company is allowed to hold 1,000 people at a time at Delaney Hall. Delaney Hall's reopening was a subject of controversy for local politicians, who claimed it doesn't hold the correct work permits or a valid certificate of occupancy. GEO Group has denied this. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democratic Representative, visited the center during its reopening last month and called for it to be shut down. She was arrested for trespassing and was later charged with assaulting an officer by acting New Jersey US Attorney Alina Habba's office. Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, was with McIver and other elected officials. He too was arrested but was released the same day. Charges against him were dropped. In a statement Friday, Baraka slammed the federal government as irresponsible and reckless. 'This incident is yet another outrageous validation of the negative consequences of a federal government that believes it is above the prudence and practicality of working within legal parameters, and encourages reckless operations of its collaborators,' he said. Earlier, he said he was concerned about reports of guards within Delaney Hall 'withholding food' and their alleged 'poor treatment' of inmates.
