FARC blamed for death of kidnapped girl

A grief-stricken father in Colombia today identified the body of his 14-year-old daughter who was kidnapped by terrorists nearly a year ago as she boarded a school bus in the capital, Bogota.

The fate of Daniela Vanegas echoed that of thousands of other people who are kidnapped in the South American country each year – far more than anywhere else.

Her father, Miguel Angel Vanegas, was summoned to the city mortuary after the authorities suspected a body that had been discovered stuffed into a large plastic bag in a poor Bogota neighbourhood was hers, but they needed a positive identification.

Vanegas, making a trip that is every father’s nightmare, entered the mortuary. The body, which had been stabbed, was indeed Daniela’s.

She was kidnapped by gunmen on October 6 last year as she followed her identical twin sister and an older sister on to the bus.

In phone calls, the kidnappers identified themselves as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, Vanegas said.

“I never gave them money (because) we never arrived at an agreement,” the distraught father recounted.

Daniela’s body was discovered on September 7 but, with so many kidnappings and murders occurring, authorities took a while to conclude it might be Daniela’s.

Vanegas and his wife, Graciela McClain, who is from Panama, said the funeral would be held at a later date.

Colombia’s yearly average for kidnappings used to be 3,000, but this dropped last year to 2,200 – one outcome of the landslide election victory of President Alvaro Uribe, who pledged to bring the violent country to order.

The number of people who died violently also fell, by 18% last year to 33,206. Homicides accounted for 22,199 of those deaths, a 22% drop from 2002, the government reported this month.