Video of Germans kidnapped in Colombia released

Weekly Semana on Tuesday released a video of two German men who Colombia’s second largest rebel group ELN is claiming to hold hostage.

In the video, the brothers Uwe and Günther Otto Brauer are filmed while eating alongside a road. According to Semana, the video was shot in the central Colombian department of Cundinamarca late last year.

SOURCE: Semana article

The ELN claimed to have held the German brothers hostage for several weeks after detaining them in the northeastern Catatumbo region, a hotbed in ELN activity and bordering Venezuela..

The ELN’s accusation that the two men are held hostage for being spies was contradicted by the images in the video which shows two men of around 70 years old relaxing apparently on holiday.

The two Germans tell in the video about having traveled a number of countries on almost all continents of the world by car.

Earlier in the day, the government of President Juan Manuel Santos assembled a collection of former state officials and political scientists to negotiate the release of a total of eight hostages — five of them foreign — kidnapped by the guerrilla group this year.

MORE: ELN hostage team assembled

In January, the ELN kidnapped two Peruvian, one Canadian and two Colombian employees of a gold mining company in the north of the country.

MORE: ‘ELN’ kidnaps 3 foreigners, 2 Colombians in northern Colombia

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