The Colombian guerrilla of the EMC – the main splinter group of the ex-FARC – claimed on Sunday August 30 the capture of a Colombian from the French Foreign Legion, specifying that he is “in perfect health”.
José Olger Melo Charry, a corporal on leave, was taken hostage on August 6 while driving on a road in the department of Nariño, in the southwest of the country, the Colombian army revealed Thursday.
Units of the Central Staff “intercepted and took prisoner Corporal JOSÉ OLGER MELO CHARRY, an active member of the French Army and belonging to the Foreign Legion, who was in Colombian territory”, indicated this guerrilla in a press release. “His capture was carried out after confirming his condition as a foreign soldier traveling in a rural area of the municipality of Cumbitara, a place where military operations against our units are taking place,” she added, in French.
“We inform the French authorities, his family and his friends that Corporal MELO CHARRY is alive, in perfect health, and that he has received medical care and adequate nutrition,” assured the EMC, which describes him as a “prisoner of war” and says it rejects “the terms of ‘kidnapping’ used by the Colombian authorities and the media.”
Aged around thirty, José Olger Melo Charry had arrived in Colombia the day before his kidnapping and was traveling with a woman. The latter was also kidnapped, before being released a few hours later, according to the Colombian army.
According to the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, the soldier, who does not have French nationality, had a permit authorizing him to reside in mainland France, but not to travel to Colombia.
The Foreign Legion is a fighting force of the French army made up of 9,000 soldiers of various nationalities, commanded mainly by French officers.
No liberation operation by the Colombian army planned
Colombia is going through its worst wave of violence in a decade, with numerous armed groups clashing in particular over control of cocaine trafficking.
The new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, from the hard right, has promised a merciless fight against guerrillas and drug traffickers. Deadly military operations have already taken place since his inauguration on August 7.
Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella attends the change of command ceremony at the José Maria Cordova military school in Bogota, August 26, 2026 © Raul ARBOLEDA / AFP/Archives
The EMC rejected the 2016 peace agreement signed at the time with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). This group, mostly active in the departments of Valle del Cauca and Cauca in the southwest, is led by a man known as Ivan Mordisco, considered Colombia’s most wanted guerrilla.
The EMC affirms that the “physical integrity” of José Olger Melo Charry is “fully guaranteed as long as no hostile military operation is carried out in the area”, making Aberlardo de la Espriella responsible for “any attempt at a military rescue operation which would endanger the life of the prisoner of war”.
The Colombian army clarified on Friday that it had no plans to free him in the current state of operations.
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Abelardo de la Espriella has promised massive bombing campaigns against powerful drug cartels in the face of a series of attacks, assassinations and kidnappings in recent months.
By 2025, a decade after laying down its arms, the FARC had been found guilty of more than 21,000 kidnappings in half a century of conflict.
One of the most emblematic cases was the kidnapping and confinement for six years of the Franco-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, kidnapped in 2002 while she was campaigning for the presidential election. She was released in 2008 in an operation led by the army.
With AFP
