http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061120/..._kidnapping_dc
Colombia nabs rebel suspected in U.S. kidnappings Mon Nov 20, 3:48 PM ET
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombia police have captured a suspected Marxist rebel they are investigating for the murder of a U.S. contract worker and the kidnapping of three more in 2003, authorities said on Monday.
National Police Director Luis Alberto Gomez said the suspect, whom he did not name, was captured along with 17 others who formed part of a guerrilla column responsible for several attacks in the southwest of the country.
Rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC -- the country's largest Marxist guerrilla group -- shot down the U.S. contract plane while it was on a mission to eradicate illicit drug crops over jungles three years ago.
A Colombian army officer and one U.S. worker were shot dead and three other Americans, Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Mark Gonsalves, were captured. The FARC says they are still alive, but have given no recent proof of their well-being.
"We managed to pinpoint one of the presumed authors of the 2003 murder of the army officer and the American who were killed when their aircraft was shot down," Gomez told reporters after displaying the suspected rebels in a police lineup.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has pushed back the FARC and reduced violence from the country's four-decade conflict with the help of millions of dollars of military aid from Washington, which brands the FARC drug-trafficking terrorists.
The Americans are among the 62 key hostages the guerrillas want to exchange for their fighters locked up in government prisons. Former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian national, is among the FARC hostages.
Hundreds of hostages have been held by the guerrillas for as long as eight years.
Uribe has expressed willingness to discuss a prisoner swap but wants the FARC to halt attacks before any negotiations and has ordered his troops to search out and rescue rebel kidnap victims from their jungle camps.
The FARC, which authorities say has around 17,000 fighters, began as a peasant army in the 1960s that took up arms to address inequalities between rich and poor in Colombia.
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