Hi Chatters, etc,

This is going to be the first of two posts tonight. Please read the second
which is an old news story but has other important information in it. Thanks.

Copyrighted by CNN-Reuters

U.S. Hostage Escapes Colombia Rebel Captors

Reuters
02-APR-98
By Karl Penhaul

BOGOTA, April 2 (Reuters) - One of four Americans taken hostage by Colombian
guerrillas escaped on Thursday after being held for 11 days in the mountains
east of Bogota.

Military sources said Thomas Fiori, 43, fled the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) rebel camp and made his way by foot across the isolated region
of deep gorges and precipices before by chance meeting a team of local
television journalists.

An army spokesman said a helicopter had been sent to pick up Fiori close to
the isolated farming village of Montfort, about 35 miles (55 kilometres) east
of the capital, and he was due to be flown to Bogota.

``In the morning about 7:30 a.m. I went to where they allow us to go to the
bathroom behind a tree very close to where they kept us -- maybe about 20 feet
(six metres) away,'' Fiori told the RCN radio network in a brief phone
interview after meeting the TV Hoy journalists.

Communication was lost before he was able to describe his ordeal at the hands
of the FARC unit. The rebels had threatened to kill him and the three other
Americans if they proved to be undercover U.S. intelligence agents.

Fiori had still not arrived in Bogota by nightfall and military sources said
bad weather had grounded the helicopter that was due to fly him from Apiay air
force base in eastern Meta province.

The State Department has said all four American hostages were bird-watchers
and denied they were U.S. spies.

Fiori was kidnapped on March 23 by the FARC's so-called 53rd Front, along with
fellow Americans Louise Agustine, 62, Todd Mark, 32, and Peter Shen.

Initial reports said all had been seized at a rebel roadblock on a major
highway east of the capital along with Italian Vito Candela and a group of
Colombians. But RCN radio said the Americans may have in fact been snatched as
they walked through mountains observing birds close to where the roadblock was
set up.

Liliana Davalos, a Colombian birdwatcher who knew Agustine and Mark, had just
returned from the United States where she gathered information to show they
are not spies and was overjoyed at Fiori's escape.

``It's great that Tom has escaped. Let's hope that the others are well and
remain in good health,'' Davalos said as she waited at the gates of Bogota's
Jose Maria Cordova military academy for Fiori to arrive.

``I have got proof that the Americans are all birdwatchers and let's hope the
FARC live up to their promise and free them,'' she added.

Colombian military chiefs have ruled out any attempt to rescue the hostages by
force. But Gen. Freddy Padilla, head of the army's 7th Brigade, said his
troops would continue to hunt the FARC unit and warned its commander, known by
his alias ``Romana,'' against taking reprisals against the other hostages.

``Everybody is watching this situation and if any harm comes to them it will
be condemned by the entire world,'' Padilla told reporters. ``I don't think
the (rebels) would be capable (of killing them) because such an act would be
absurd for political purposes.''

Colombia's leftist rebels, now estimated to number some 20,000, have been
accused of kidnapping more than 900 people in 1997 and using ransom money to
finance a war against the Colombian state.

In 1995 a British army sergeant, Timothy Cowley, who had been working as a
clerk in the British embassy in Bogota was abducted while on a bird-watching
trip in central Colombia and held for five months before being released
unhurt.

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.All rights reserved.

Great birding and find that next lifer,

John (One of Birders2)

John + Irma = 2, we are birders, too.

John C. LeVine
Birders2 at aol.com
Los Angeles, CA

Please put <To Birders2> in subject line when e-mailing us personally. I do
not open all of the 200-300 e-mails I receive each day, but I want to be sure
to read your e-mails to us. Thanks!


April 2, 1998
8:15 pm PDT