ELN kidnapping case

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Ciudad Perdida (Colombia)
Ciudad Perdida
Ciudad Perdida
Location of Ciudad Perdida in Colombia

The ELN kidnapping case includes eight tourists , including a German, being taken hostage by the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) near Ciudad Perdida ( Colombia ) in 2003. From a legal point of view, the case is significant because it is the first time a German hostage has been convicted by the highest court was to reimburse the exemption costs.

procedure

The group, consisting of four Israeli , two British , one Basque tourist and the German Reinhilt Weigel, visited the archaeological site Ciudad Perdida in northern Colombia in September 2003 . The tourists were kidnapped near Ciudad Perdida by the Colombian guerrilla group Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and held in the inaccessible mountain region of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta . A British man escaped early. Through the mediation of the International Red Cross and the Colombian Red Cross, Reinhilt Weigel was released 74 days after the kidnappers' request for an independent investigation into the human rights situation of the indigenous peoples in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta was fulfilled. With the mediation of the Archbishop of Medellín Alberto Giraldo Jaramillo , the remaining hostages were also released after 101 days.

During this hostage-taking, the Israeli hostages showed the behavior of non-cooperation. They attempted to flee in the hope that, like the first British hostage, it would also succeed at the beginning of the hostage-taking, but ended almost fatally for them and in which they were captured again near the hostage bivouac . The British and German hostages each showed the Stockholm Syndrome with cooperation towards the hostage takers. The hostages still show psychological after-effects from the hostage-taking. Reinhilt Weigel recorded her suffering, that of her fellow prisoners and the struggle for survival in a diary. The British hostage and documentary filmmaker Mark Henderson made a film about the hostage-taking and the psychological reactions of the hostages, even after their release , in which two of the hostage-takers and guerrillas had their say.

Legal aftermath

Due to the fundamental danger in Colombia and the travel warning from the Foreign Office , Reinhilt Weigel was charged for the cost of the exemption under the Consular Act, in particular the charter costs for the helicopter that had flown her out of the jungle. Weigel complained against it. The Federal Administrative Court sentenced her in 2009 to the final payment of around 13,000 euros. For the first time a German was sentenced to pay the exemption costs. Even in older abduction cases, exempted German citizens were irregularly but repeatedly involved in the exemption costs.

Web links

  • Wolfgang Metzner, Marc Goergen: Colombia. Kidnapped. In: The star . February 6, 2004, accessed on November 1, 2013 (with excerpts from Reinhilt Weigel's diary).
  • Mark Henderson, Kate Horne: Kidnapped. ZDF (2009), arte.tv, October 31, 2013, accessed on November 1, 2013 (documentary, 81 min.).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ After the kidnapping: Colombia hostage landed in Bremen FAZ , November 26, 2003
  2. Sierra Nevada Survival International Indians , website accessed September 9, 2019
  3. ^ Frank Semper: The warning call of the "big brothers" June 23, 2012
  4. Mirjam Gehrke: Human rights violations by coal mining Deutsche Welle , November 20, 2008
  5. BVerwG, judgment of May 28, 2009 - 7 C 13.08
  6. ^ O. Das Gupta: Basic judgment on exemption costs. The hostages and the money. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 17, 2010, accessed October 31, 2013 .
  7. Telegraph German government charges ex-hostage helicopter rescue fee. In: The Daily Telegraph . May 28, 2009, accessed November 1, 2013 .