The Colombian Police announced today the capture of four people suspected of participating in the kidnapping of Luis Manuel Díaz, father of Liverpool soccer player Luis Díaz, who was held by the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla for 12 days.
“We captured four people allegedly responsible for the kidnapping of Luis Manuel Díaz. Thanks to coordinated work with (the) Prosecutor’s Office and authorities of the United Kingdom,” the Colombian Police reported on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
The identities of the detainees were not revealed, but the Police indicated that they belong to a “criminal group” called Los Primos.
The people, who were captured in the municipalities of Barrancas, in the north, where the kidnapping occurred, and in neighboring Maicao, were carrying two firearms, the AFP news agency reported.
The authority did not specify the relationship between “Los Primos” and the ELN, a guerrilla founded in 1964 and that has been negotiating to lay down its arms with the government of leftist Gustavo Pedro for almost a year.
On Thursday, the ELN handed over the father of one of South American soccer’s biggest stars to a commission of the United Nations and the Catholic Church in a mountainous area in the north of the country.
Luis Manuel Díaz and his wife, Cilenis Marulanda, were kidnapped by motorcyclists on October 28 while they were traveling in a van through Barrancas, the small town in the north of the country where the family is from.
The woman was released that same night.
Known as Mane, the 56-year-old amateur soccer coach returned home exhausted and limping from the long walks he was forced to take through a mountainous area known as Serranía del Perijá, on the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Yesterday he said he had been in the power of two different groups during the kidnapping.
“I felt a change after three days, when it seemed that I was already in the hands of the ELN. They spoke to me differently and treated me differently,” he recalled at a press conference in Barrancas, where the family hopes to stay.
The kidnapping of Manuel Díaz shakes the peace process that the ELN has maintained with the Petro government since November 21, 2022, as well as the six-month bilateral ceasefire agreed between the parties since August 3.
The military commander of the guerrilla, Antonio García, acknowledged last Saturday that they had made a “mistake” with the kidnapping.
Petro, in power since August 7, 2022, assured last week that the kidnapping fractures the “trust” between the negotiators regarding “the possibilities of peace in Colombia.”
Source: Ambito
