A Colombian court found Crisanto Gomez, the farmer accused of kidnapping the child of former FARC hostage Clara Rojas, to be not guilty on Tuesday.
A judge from the Villavicencio criminal court announced that after three years of proceedings, which included testimonies from people like former Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo and veteran FARC guerrilla “Martin Sombra,” the prosecution had not successfully linked the peasant to the kidnapping and unlawful restraint of the child for over two years.
Lawyer and former vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas spent six years in captivity following her kidnapping by the FARC in 2002 alongside former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. In 2006 it was revealed that a son, Emmanuel, had been born in captivity after Rojas had become pregnant by an unnamed guerrilla. The baby was given to Gomez by the FARC after he fell ill at the age of eight months.
Rojas did not to see her son for another three years, until Colombia’s armed forces rescued her and fourteen others in the highly-celebrated liberation mission “Operation Checkmate” in 2008. Upon her release, Rojas asserted that that Gomez had effectively kidnapped her child.
Following the ruling, the prosecution anounced their intention to appeal the verdict.