In a statement given to journalists, one of the guerrilla members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in Spanish) confirmed that the FARC is holding French journalist Roméo Langlois as a war prisoner, reported the radio station Radio Caracol.
The statement said that the journalist was shot in the arm, but that he was doing fine and had been offered medical attention, reported the news agency AFP.
Langlois disappeared while covering a counter-narcotics operation between the Colombian military troops and the guerrillas on Saturday, April 28. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a statement on Tuesday, May 1, calling on the FARC to immediately release the journalist and return him to safety.
The journalist's kidnapping has provoked debate about whether or not the reporter should have been in the military operation, reported Vanguardia and El Colombiano. "It is very inconvenient that journalists can accompany the Army in high risk military operations," said Alfredo Rangel, director of the Security and Democracy Foundation and expert of Colombian armed conflict issues, as quoted by the AFP news agency.
