Bogota -
Dutchwoman Tanja Nijmeijer is not a hostage but a true guerrilla member of Colombia's leftist FARCrebel group who will fight on until victory or death, she said in an interview published on Wednesday.
“If you still believe and try to say that I've been kidnapped, come and rescue me and we'll receive you here... with landmines, mortars and everything we've got,” Nijmeijer challenged authorities in a 53-second interview videotaped at a jungle camp in August.
Speaking in Spanish, Nijmeijer wore green fatigues and carried a machine gun slung over her shoulder for the interview, which was posted on the website of Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
“I am a FARCguerrilla and will continue being a guerrilla until I win or die. There's no going back,” she told freelance Colombian journalist Jorge Enrique Botero a few weeks before a deadly raid in which she was initially believed to have been killed.
The 32-year-old former schoolteacher joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) in 2002 and has since risen to its top ranks.
Code-named “Alexandra”, she is believed to have served as personal assistant to Jorge Briceno, a top FARCcommander who was killed in a September government raid on his hideout.
Three women were also killed in the military raid and, for a time, Nijmeijer was thought to be among them until authorities found her dental records did not match any of the victims.
Born in 1978 to a Catholic middle-class couple, Nijmeijer travelled several times to Colombia and even lived for a time in the heart of the country's coffee-growing region 360km west of Bogota.
Reportedly shocked at the income gap between rich and poor, she joined the FARCin November 2002. She was trained on how to use weapons and make bombs and, according to authorities, took part in a 2003 Bogota bombing that killed a child and wounded 16 people.
She made the headlines in 2007, when advancing Colombian soldiers came upon her diary in a hastily abandoned FARC jungle camp.
The diary, published in Colombia's leading newspaper El Tiempo, detailed petty squabbles among the rebel leaders, privileges the leaders enjoy, and how far the guerrillas had strayed from their Marxist ideals.
An e-mail dated April 5 and addressed to Briceno noted that Nijmeijer had joined the FARC's international team, a sort of foreign affairs ministry for the rebels. - Sapa-AFP