BBC: Boy Freed After Rebel Kidnapping
An 11-year-old Colombian boy has been reunited with his family 18 days after he was kidnapped by members of a dissident rebel group.
Five armed men wearing balaclavas stormed the boy's home in a rural area of Valle del Cauca province on 3 May and seized him and a domestic employee.
They released the employee soon after but held the boy in a shack at a remote location for almost three weeks until they agreed his freedom in negotiations with Colombia's ombudsman's office, the Red Cross and the Catholic Church.
Rebel groups in Colombia are notorious for forcibly recruiting children but the boy's abduction from his home at gunpoint nevertheless shocked locals.