Huegun: “I’m fine, extremely happy, I wanted to speak to my family”
Moments after his release by the ELN San Sebastian-born Asier Huegun emerged tired and thin, but well
Jakes Goikoetxea, Special Correspondent, Valledupar (Colombia)
Donostia (San Sebastian)-born Asier Huegun touched down at the Alfonso Lopez airport of Valledupar (in northern Colombia in the south-west of the Sierra Nevada mountains) at around 12.30 hours (20.30 hours Basque Country time). He had been taken hostage by the ELN (Colombian National Liberation Army) on September 12 along with another seven tourists in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and was released yesterday along with aGerman woman, Reinhilt Weigel. Asier Huegun was wearing a red T-shirt and green trousers. The moment the helicopter landed he started speaking on his mobile phone as he walked up and down beside the aircraft. Weigel did the same. All the people who had participated in their release waited outside the helicopter while it was being refuelled. At 13.00 hours Huegun put some things in his rucksack and got back into the helicopter half an hour after touching down at Valledupar. The aircraft then headed for Bogota military airport where the released hostages’ relatives and the Spanish and German ambassadors were waiting for them.
Asier Huegun and Reinhilt Weigel did not go near the airport building. According to the Efe news agency Huegun had told the people who had gone to meet them: “I’m fine, extremely happy, I just wanted to speak to my family.” In the evening Spanish public TV broadcast some of the declarations Asier Huegun made during that moment. “The first few days were very hard as we didn’t know who we were with, no one told us anything. (…) They told me the date of my release a month ago and I was all the time just waiting and waiting not knowing, thinking that maybe the next day would be the day of my release, some days were really hard.” Hector Fabio Henao, director of the Colombian Pastoral Social Services, and Dario Echeverri, the general secretary of the National Conciliation Committee, who collected the two hostages, also spoke to reporters. Echeverri said at the airport, “Huegun and Weigel are very happy and very well, both physically and mentally”.
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