Freed Hostage: 3 Americans Ailing

[February 28, 2008]  BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- On top of tropical ailments, the three U.S. military contractors held by Colombian rebels still suffer injuries from the plane crash five years ago that landed them in guerrilla hands, said a fellow hostage released Wednesday.

The three also were badly shaken by the 60-year prison sentence a U.S. judge slapped on a Colombian rebel last month after a jury convicted him in connection with their Feb. 13, 2003 capture, said former Sen. Luis Eladio Perez.

Perez said he spent the last six months with the Americans, all captives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, seeing them last on Feb. 4.

"The oldest, the pilot Thomas Howes (aged 54), had a blow to his head that gives him very strong recurring headaches," said Perez. "He's got a problem with hypertension with very little medical treatment, almost none, and it's very difficult to get drugs for hypertension."

Perez said Marc Gonsalves, 35, also has problems "resulting from the accident in his spine and his knees. He's also suffered all kind of illnesses that we also got like leishmaniasis and malaria."

He said Gonsalves had hepatitis recently.

In a radio interview just hours after he was released with three other Colombian politicians who had been held for six years, Perez did not specifically mention the third American hostage, 43-year-old Keith Stansell.

Perez described the three Americans as being depressed by the Jan. 28 sentence given in Washington to Ricardo Palmera, who was convicted in July of conspiring to kidnap them.

Last weekend, a rebel commander vowed to hold the three Americans "for 60 years in a jungle prison."

FARC guerrillas captured the three when their surveillance plane crashed on Feb. 13, 2003, in rebel territory in southern Colombia.

Though Palmera never denied his leading role in the FARC, he said he never saw the three Americans or kept them hostage himself.

"They undertand that the FARC can impose the same sentence on them," Perez told Caracol radio.

Perez said that he imagined the three Americans' spirits would have been lifted somewhat by U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield's recent statements that Washington would be disposed to review Palmera's prison term if it would lead to their liberation.

"I think that that gave them a little bit of hope, that finally the U.S. government was concerned about them," he said.

In fact, Brownfield has stressed that the U.S. system of government prohibits the executive branch from interfering with a prison sentence -- though he has said Washington has not excluded any avenue for trying to secure the release of the three Americans.

A treaty Washington has with Colombia would allow it to send Palmera to a prison in this country.

[Associated Press; By FRANK BAJAK]

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