Colombian Army Searches For Liverpool Winger Diaz's Kidnapped Father

Barrancas, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Oct, 2023) More than 120 Colombian soldiers backed by police searched Sunday for the father of Liverpool winger Luis Diaz, kidnapped with his wife, who has since been rescued.

The army said in a statement it had set up roadblocks and deployed two motorized platoons, unmanned aircraft, helicopters and a plane with radar in the search for Luis Manuel Diaz.

Colombian authorities did not provide details about the kidnapping, but media reported the footballer's father and mother Cilenis Marulanda were taken Saturday by armed men on motorcycles at a gas station in their home town of Barrancas in the northern La Guajira department.

President Gustavo Petro said Marulanda was rescued in Barrancas hours after the couple was taken.

Attorney General Francisco Barbosa told a press conference Sunday that Diaz "could be" in Venezuela, without elaborating.

The motive for the kidnapping has not been divulged.

"We are desperate, we are distressed, we know nothing about him," Olmer Diaz, the kidnapped man's brother, told AFP in Barrancas, urging his "prompt release."

Colombia is a country just emerging from decades of civil conflict between rival armed groups that has seen more than 38,000 people kidnapped over the years, mostly for ransom.

Petro, at an event to mark the start of local elections in Bogota, said "all the public forces have been deployed" to find Diaz's father.

Luis Manuel Diaz was an amateur coach at the only football school in Barrancas, a town of about 38,000 inhabitants near the Venezuelan border, where his son showed promise from a very young age.

His father is credited with aiding the meteoric rise of the Liverpool and Colombia striker known as "Lucho."