Liverpool striker Luis Diaz wept as he reunited with his father, who was released last week after a 12-day ordeal at the hands of Colombia’s ELN guerrilla group.
Diaz returned to Colombia to join the national squad ahead of a World Cup qualification match against Brazil on Thursday in the seaside city of Barranquilla, where he met with his father, Luis Manuel Diaz.
According to photographs provided by the Colombian Football Federation (FCF), the couple embraced in tears.
Luis Manuel Diaz, 56, wore a black T-shirt with the words: “No more kidnapping.”
“After 12 days deprived of freedom, this is the first contact of the player with his father and the rest of the family, who lived long moments of anguish,” the FCF said on its website with a photo of the two men and the footballer’s young daughter on her grandfather’s knee.
On October 28, Luis Manuel Diaz and his wife Cilenis Marulanda were kidnapped by armed men on motorbikes at a petrol station in their hometown of Barrancas, near the Venezuelan border.
Marulanda was rescued hours later, and a large ground and air search for her husband was initiated.
The ELN, which is in peace talks with the government and is a signatory to a six-month truce that took effect in August, called the kidnapping by one of its soldiers a “mistake.”
After days of rigorous discussions, the rebels handed Diaz over to humanitarian workers in a hilly border location last Thursday.
The next day, he told reporters at his house in Barrancas how his kidnappers forced him to walk “too much,” with little sleep.
Police announced on Saturday that they had apprehended four suspects in the crime.
Luis Manuel Diaz is the creator and amateur coach of Barrancas’ only football academy, where his son has shown promise since he was a child.
Diaz Sr is credited with assisting his son’s spectacular rise, since he has played for his country 43 times and is the first Indigenous Colombian to reach the elite echelons of world football.
According to acquaintances, he occasionally sold food he cooked himself to finance for his son’s excursions to Barranquilla, where he made his debut.
The young winger known as “Lucho” later played for Porto, and now plays for Liverpool.