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The kidnapped general.


General Mendieta is a Colombia National Police commissioned officer who was recently rescued from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC after eleven years of kidnapping. He was took prisoner in 1998 in the city of Mitu, in the Colombian Amazon, when he was practicing as the commander of city police bureau, in the rank of litenuant colonel. During his captivity he was promoted by the Colombian Government to the the ranks of colonel, Brigade General and Major General. Mendieta was rescued with three more Armed Forces of Colombia members by Colombia Army through 'The Chameleon Operation'. Until that day General Mendieta was the police and military force kidnapped the with the highest rank in the world.

Two facts involves me with this. The first one is that I produced a journalism report on it as a prelude of General Mendieta's rescue. It was by the way of his last promotion which was particular due to the general's obvious absence. Then, I attended the ceremony presided over by the in-those-days president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, where I interviewed some Mendieta's relatives and fiends. It was touching. Some days later I interviwed the general's wife in their home's livingroom. We talked about the kidnapping experience and the expectations about Mendieta's eventual return, which became, as I guessed, a premonition. I also travel to Villavicencio, a city close to Bogota, to interview Alan Jara, a politician who was kept captive with the general but was released some months before the interview.

At the end, as I wrote before, this report was a premonition and a prelude of General Mendieta's coming back to freeedom. I share in the next blog entrance that report's video. It is in Spanish but as you watch you can understand the ceremony and war video of this thrilling story. The investigation, the shooting, the writing and the editing were made by me. The voice is Rafael Poveda's, a well-known Colombian journalist.

The second fact was a kind of nice concidence. Some days before General Mendieta's rescue I traveled to a far-from-capital-city town in the Colombian Amazon on the border with Venenzuela to make a TV report about communication connectivity in a place you can get only by boat after many hours or by military air craft. I chose the second way, I flew in a Russian- made passengers and cargo Antolov. When I came back to Bogota the air craft's crew were commanded to fly back to the Amazon to accomplish a secret misison. I stayed in Bogota and some hour later I learned that the secret mission was to bring General Mendieta back to freedom. I recognized the air craft on TV because of the way it expeled motor smoke and because of, of course, the registration number. In few hours me and General Menieta shared the same air craft and crew.

Today General Mendieta is still an in-service Police commissioned officer. He is even the highest ranked in the Colombia Police, but not the Chief Commander. Due to the time in captivity, one of his subordinates is his boss.
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