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NOTE The following text is a quote: Top FARC Commander Sentenced To 27 Years In Prison For Conspiring To Import Tons Of Cocaine Into The United States JUL 22 -- (Manhattan, NY) - JOHN P. GILBRIDE, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York Field Division ("DEA") and PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and, announced that GERARDO AGUILAR RAMIREZ, a/k/a "Cesar," a former front commander in the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or "FARC"), was sentenced today to 27 years in prison for conspiring to...

FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas, July 11, 2008 – Years of preparation by U.S. Army South, Brooke Army Medical Center, Northrop Grumman Corp. and family members finally came to fruition on the night of July 2 when three American civilian contractors set foot in San Antonio. Former hostage Marc Gonsalves hugs his daughter, Destiny, during July 7, 2008, at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. U.S. Army photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell, who were held captive for five and half years in a Colombian jungle, were escorted to Brooke Army...

July 3, 2008 Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Colombian military intelligence managed to infiltrate the top hierarchy of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and arrange for a transfer of hostages purportedly to be handed over to Alfonso Cano, the rebel group's top leader. A government mole arranged for the hostages to be brought from three locations to one camp, then taken to a helicopter the FARC believed belonged to a friendly aid group that would take the hostages to Cano. Instead, the chopper was a military helicopter piloted by intelligence officers who whisked a total of 15 hostages...

The Colombian military said today it has rescued 15 hostages from a leftist guerrilla group, including three American defense contractors and former Colombia presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told a news conference in Bogota that all the rescued hostages are in reasonably good health after being held for years in jungle camps by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC. Eleven of those rescued are members of the Colombian army and police. The three Americans -- Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes -- were conducting an aerial surveillance mission as part of...

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 17 (Reuters) - While foreigners kidnapped in Iraq make instant headlines around the world, three Americans captured by Colombian rebels three years ago are all but forgotten. President Alvaro Uribe looks set to win a second term in an election next week, riding popularity won through tough security policies that have targeted Marxist guerrillas and helped tame high kidnap and crime rates. But for the families of U.S. contractors Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell captured in 2003 on a mission to detect cocaine crops, and relatives of thousands of Colombians held hostage, falling crime statistics...

After their tiny plane crashed deep in the jungles of southern Colombia, three American civilians on a mission to search for cocaine labs, drug planes and, occasionally, guerrilla units were taken hostage by Marxist rebels. A year later, the men's families say the captives have been all but forgotten. Some say that is the way American officials and the men's employers want it to be. The three Americans — Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes — worked cloaked in secrecy for two subsidiaries of Northrop Grumman, the huge military contractor, in an arrangement used increasingly by the United States...

Guarded by hundreds of armed rebels deep in a malaria-infested jungle, three American captives pass the time playing with a homemade deck of cards and dreaming of their families. The threat of death always hangs nearby. The three U.S. military contractors have been cut off from the outside world since their capture by rebels seven months ago. That isolation was broken when a Colombian journalist traveled for days over rough roads and jungle rivers with a rebel escort to interview them July 25 in remote southern Colombia. "They were nervous, and there were traces of fear on their faces," freelance...