Jhon Frank Pinchao walked, swam and crawled for 17 days through the dense Amazonian rainforest before running into a counter-narcotics patrol on Wednesday.
Exhausted, emaciated and tearful, the policeman told how he had been held by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, in a jungle camp alongside three American intelligence contractors and a French-Colombian former presidential candidate. They are among about 60 hostages held by the Farc as bargaining chips in a hoped-for prisoner exchange with the Colombian Government.