From the AP Wire:
An American writer and two hikers emerged smiling from the Colombian jungle Friday after being escorted from a war zone by right-wing paramilitaries but leftist rebels still held captive two other foreign journalists.
Robert Young Pelton, a freelance writer and TV reporter, said he and his companions, Megan Smaker and Mark Wedeven, were not mistreated. He said he held nothing against the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, which encountered the trio in a jungle-covered region along the Panamanian border, for removing them from the area when fighting broke out.
“Even though we were not happy about being kidnapped or being kept away from our families and our jobs, they had a reason to do so,” Pelton, author of a guidebook called ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Places, told a TV reporter.’ “After all, it is their country and their war.”