Colombian rebels admitted on Friday they did not have a boy they had promised to release last week in a Venezuela-sponsored hand-over of hostages and accused the government of snatching him just as he was about to be freed.
Many in Colombia were on tenterhooks over the year-end holidays waiting for Marxist guerrillas to release the child named Emmanuel, who was born in captivity and is thought to be 3 or 4 years old.
But DNA test results announced by the attorney general showed he was already living under state foster care in Bogota after being turned over by the rebels in 2005.
The revelation damaged the credibility of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which had promised to turn him and two other hostages over to Venezuela's left-wing president, Hugo Chavez.
The deal to release Emmanuel, his mother Clara Rojas, and a kidnapped lawmaker named Consuelo Gonzalez crumbled on Monday when the rebels accused the army of intensifying its operations in a jungle area where the hostages were to be handed over.
Colombia's conservative President Alvaro Uribe accused the FARC of lying and said it did not go through with the hostage release because Emmanuel had already been quietly handed over to child welfare authorities.
In a statement late on Friday, the FARC said it had turned the boy over to a Bogota family to keep him safe until his official release, and called Uribe the real child-snatcher.
"Uribe kidnapped Emmanuel with the miserable intention of sabotaging his hand-over," the FARC statement said.
