Free Republic

The Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) regard Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as an ideological leader, identify with him and admire him, said Tuesday Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs Fernando Araújo, a former hostage. "The FARC guerrilla I met, views Venezuela's President Chávez as an ideological leader," Araújo asserted. Last December 31st, the minister tapped into a military incursion and managed to escape from captivity after almost six years in the Colombian jungle. "I was much interested to see that they (the rebels) constantly study Chávez' biography, see documentary films of Chávez on TV. There is a feeling of excitement among...

Until six weeks ago, no one knew if foreign-minister-designate, Fernando Araujo, was even alive. The then-economic development minister had been kidnapped in December 2000 and held hostage by the Marxist FARC narcoterrorists. ...Araujo spent six years in a jungle captivity... Fast forward to December 2006, when in a hail of machine-gun fire he escaped his captors and staggered five days in the wilderness to return to civilization. Then on Monday, President Alvaro Uribe asked the still-gaunt Araujo to be Colombia's foreign minister,... Putting a former hostage forward seemed to be Uribe's intention. He noted that Araujo "himself suffered our national...

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia‘s president quickly named a new foreign minister Monday, hours after Maria Consuelo Araujo resigned amid a growing scandal linking the political establishment and far-right paramilitaries. "The president of the republic informs his compatriots that he has designated as foreign minister Fernando Araujo Perdomo, a reflective citizen, who has suffered in this national tragedy, and in whose overcoming of which we are involved," said a statement by the presidency.

FREMONT, Calif. - The name on the birth certificate was Edward Araujo Jr., but the teenager preferred the first name Gwen. At age 17, before getting a chance to make the name change official, Araujo was beaten and strangled after the people she thought were her friends found out she was biologically male. This week, Araujo's family asked a court for a posthumous name change to Gwen Amber Rose Araujo. "She's Gwen to me, and I'm her mother," Sylvia Guerrero said outside the courthouse. "This is who she was. She's transgender and she's Gwen." Superior Court Commissioner Thomas Surh called...

Hayward -- One of three men accused of killing a 17-year-old Newark transgender nearly three years ago testified today that he participated in the attack after learning that Gwen Araujo was not the woman he thought he'd had sex with. Testifying for the first time at his retrial on murder charges, Jose Merel, 25, said he was disgusted when friends at a party revealed that Araujo, who called herself Lida and with whom Merel had previously had anal sex, was biologically male. "It's hard to explain," Merel said in a Hayward courtroom of the way he felt on Oct. 3,...