Luis Díaz’s father was released before Liverpool vs Toulouse in the Europa League

The ELN guerrilla, in peace negotiations with the Colombian government, released this Thursday the father of the Liverpool soccer player, Luis Díaz, kidnapped since October 28 in an area bordering Venezuela.

Accompanied by a humanitarian mission, Luis Manuel Díaz landed in a helicopter at the airport in the city of Valledupar (north), near the Serranía del Perijá, where he was handed over by the rebels.

“Long live Freedom and Peace,” wrote President Gustavo Petro on the X network, formerly Twitter.

Representatives of the United Nations, the Ombudsman’s Office and the Catholic Church accompanied the release.

The Episcopal Conference of Colombia released a photograph in which Mr. Díaz is seen in a wooded area while a doctor takes his vital signs.

The ELN kidnapped the parents of the English Liverpool winger in Barrancas, the indigenous town where the family is from in the department of La Guajira (north). That same day the soccer player’s mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was released.

“I ask the ELN for the prompt release of my father,” “Lucho” Díaz had said on social networks on Sunday, after scoring a goal against Luton Town.

“Every second, every minute our anguish grows: my mother, my brothers and I are desperate,” the Colombian national team star added in the brief statement.

The Army withdrew its troops on Monday following the condition set by the rebels for a “rapid and safe liberation” in the midst of peace talks. More than 250 troops searched by air and land for Díaz, a kidnapping that went around the world