Colombian rebels admit taking Briton
The National Liberation Army -- a Cuban-inspired force known by the Spanish
initials ELN -- said in an official e-mail that its guerrillas had pulled
the 28-year old
graphic designer off a bus in the western Colombian jungle at 4 a.m. (0900
GMT)
on Sunday morning.
But the ELN said that its fighters freed Parks after they came under attack
by an
army patrol.
"At 6 a.m. on the outskirts of the city of Quibdo, units from the government's
army
belonging to the Fourth Brigade killed the British tourist," said the ELN,
adding that
it wanted the British Embassy to investigate.
"Our organization puts itself at the disposition of the investigators to
help clear up
this extra-judicial murder," the outlawed ELN said.
A Fourth Brigade officer said a court investigation now underway had yet
to
establish whether Parks was killed by army or rebel gunfire.
No British Embassy spokesman was immediately available for comment.
Parks paid $12 for his overnight bus ticket from Quibdo for an extremely
dangerous 80-mile (130 km) journey to the industrial city of Medellin.
Police say
that the ELN, which kidnaps hundreds of people every year for ransom, operates
two roadblocks on the highway.
The ELN is the second-largest Marxist rebel force fighting in a 37-year
old war
which has claimed about 40,000 mainly civilian lives in the past decade
alone.
Parks, from Bromley in the southern English county of Kent, had arrived
in
Colombia on September 15, continuing a Latin American holiday which had
taken
him to Cuba, Peru and Ecuador. He had started to learn Spanish to prepare
for the
trip, a friend of the dead man told Reuters.
Copyright 2001 Reuters.