Former FARC hostage Pablo Emilio Moncayo said at a press conference on Monday that he snubbed Colombian President Alvaro Uribe following his release because to thank the president would have made him “a hypocrite.”
Moncayo explained that he thanked the presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil, but not Uribe, because “I would have been a hypocrite if I had thanked him,” after, in a proof-of-life video made during his captivity, Moncayo aggressively pounded the table and demanded that Uribe “open the door” for his liberation.
Moncayo made the explanation at a joint press conference with former FARC hostage Josue Daniel Calvo, which was called to reveal new details about the two Colombians’ time in captivity.
Moncayo revealed that despite his twelve years as a FARC hostage, he still plans to remain in the Colombian military, saying that he wears the Colombian military uniform “with pride.”
Calvo also told the press that he is planning to return to military service.
Moncayo said that while “Operation Checkmate”, the military operation which rescued Ingrid Betancourt and fourteen others from the FARC, made him “really happy for his fellow rescued soldiers,” it also made him depressed, because he was not included in the group of those rescued.
Operation Checkmate rescued 15 FARC hostages: three U.S. contractors, former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and eleven members of the Colombian armed forces.
Both Moncayo and Calvo went into detail about the ordeals they had gone through while in FARC captivity. Moncayo said that as a result of being chained up by the FARC, he had to use crutches for seven months after being released from the chains.
Calvo revealed that during his kidnapping in 2008 in which he was shot five times, his captors tried to finish him off and kill him, firing a pistol twice into his chest, in addition to a rifle. According to Calvo, the guns jammed, failing to fire.
Both Moncayo and Calvo were discharged on Friday from Bogota’s Central Military Hospital with relatively clean bills of health.
Calvo, who was released on March 28 after nearly a year in captivity, was kidnapped by the FARC in April 2009.
Moncayo, who was released on March 30 after 12 years in captivity, was kidnapped by the FARC on December 21, 1997.