Bogota  - Leftist Colombian rebels on Thursday released a former legislator who was taken hostage in 2002 and was the last politician held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Sigifredo Lopez, 45, a former regional legislator in the Valle del Cauca province who was kidnapped on April 11, 2002, had an emotional reunion in Cali airport with his two sons, aged 18 and 20, and his wife and mother.

Later, hundreds of people gathered in Cali's San Francisco square to greet Lopez. "Let us demand the freedom of all the kidnapped," he said.

Bogota - Leftist Colombian rebels on Thursday released a former legislator who was taken hostage in 2002 and was the last politician held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Sigifredo Lopez, 45, a former regional legislator in the Valle del Cauca province who was kidnapped on April 11, 2002, had an emotional reunion in Cali with his two sons, aged 18 and 20, and his wife and mother.

A Brazilian Army helicopter transported Lopez from a rural area of Cauca province in southwestern Colombia.

Bogota  - Leftist Colombian rebels on Thursday released a former legislator who was taken hostage in 2002, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed.

Sigifredo Lopez, a former regional legislator in the Valle del Cauca province who was kidnapped on April 11, 2002, was the last politician held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The rebels now hold hostage only police and military officers.

Bogota  - Shackled every night, forced to walk through jungles and subjected to extreme deprivation, a released Colombian hostage said the worst aspect of his captivity was the loss of family, not his physical trials.

Alan Jara, a former governor of the central Colombian province of Meta who was held hostage by leftist rebels for seven and a half years, said Wednesday that enduring the absence of his family was tougher than being bound and abused.

Bogota  - Alan Jara, former governor of the central Colombian province of Meta, was released Tuesday by leftist Colombian rebels after more than seven years in captivity.

"I am free. I have rested for seven-and-a-half years, now it's time to work," Jara told reporters in Meta capital Villavicencio.

Bogota  - Leftist rebels in Colombia on Tuesday released a former provincial governor that they had held hostage since 2001, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed.

Alan Jara, former governor of the southern province of Meta, was handed over to Red Cross officials, Yves Heller, the spokesman for the organization in Colombia, told reporters.

Following Jara's release by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the jungle in southern Colombia, he was set to travel in a Brazilian helicopter to the city of Villavicencio, near the Colombian capital Bogota, Heller said.