BOGOTA (AFP) — A new round of DNA tests will be conducted in Spain to confirm whether a boy found in a Bogota orphanage is the love child of hostage Clara Rojas -- a top aide to ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt -- and a guerrilla fighter, officials said Saturday.
The boy, born after rebels captured Rojas and Betancourt in February 2002, is at the heart of a real-life soap opera involving Rojas' family, conservative President Alvaro Uribe, leftist Colombian rebels, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy has also taken personal interest in seeing the release of Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen.
"The samples arrived today" (Saturday) and the DNA taken from the child will be compared with that of his possible uncles and aunts, said Angel Carracedo, director of Spain's Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
Carracedo told Spanish news media that the results will be ready in one week.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) said in a statement late Friday that the boy is indeed Rojas' child. Hours earlier Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguaran said that a first round of DNA tests showed a "very high probability" that the young boy, named Emmanuel, belonged to Rojas.
Uribe announced at mid-week that the guerrilla's planned release around Christmas of Rojas, three-and-a-half year-old Emmanuel, and a third abductee, legislator Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo, failed because the boy was really at a state-run orphanage.
A man now in a witness protection program named Jose Gomez told investigators he received the boy from the guerrillas in 2005, the daily El Tiempo reported earlier.
The rebels threatened to kill him if he did not return the boy by December 30, 2007, Gomez told the newspaper.
The report said the child suffered health problems, and that Gomez in 2006 took him for treatment at a hospital, where staff suspected child abuse and transferred him to the orphanage.
Gomez tried to get the boy back ahead of the FARC deadline, but by then the case was being handled by the district attorney, which was investigating anonymous phone tips claiming the child was Rojas' son.
When the news broke, Rojas' family provided tissue samples and DNA tests were arranged.
Soon after Colombian officials announced the preliminary results the Venezuelan government news agency, quoting a FARC statement, said the child "was placed in Bogota under the care of honest people, while a humanitarian agreement was being signed."
The boy was sent to Bogota to protect him from anti-guerrilla operations and the constant displacements the rebels are forced to make, read the statement, dated January 2.
The FARC accused Uribe of keeping Emmanuel "kidnapped in Bogota ... with the dark purpose of torpedoing his release" and that of his mother and Gonzalez.
Rojas' mother Clara Gonzalez said in an interview with French radio broadcast Saturday that she was ready to meet her grandson.
Emmanuel was born from an allegedly consensual relationship between Rojas and one of her captors.
"It is a moment I have dreamed about for years," Clara Gonzalez told France Inter radio.
She added that she would "love to kiss him, hold him, take him in my arms..."
Gonzalez said she realised she must take into consideration the boy's "condition, his age and the fact that he doesn't know me. But Emmanuel will always be welcome," she said.
The FARC announced in December that Rojas, her son and Gonzalez would be released and delivered to Venezuela's Chavez, a leftist known to sympathize with the rebels.
The complex operation, which involved Venezuelan helicopters fly to a secret location deep in the Colombian jungle under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, did not proceed because the rebels never gave the pilots the coordinates to the meeting place.
The rebels said they could not proceed because of anti-guerrilla military operations.
The Venezuelan helicopters, meanwhile, continued on stand-by in Villavicencio, Colombia, awaiting word to pick up the FARC hostages.
The FARC, Colombia's largest guerrilla group, has some 17,000 fighters and has been at war with the state for four decades.
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