Justice eludes family
of slain Big Isle woman
BOGOTA, Colombia >> A suspected rebel extradited to the United States last year for his alleged role in the 1999 murder of three Americans -- including a Big Island woman -- has been sent back to Colombia after prosecutors failed to link him to the killings, authorities said yesterday.
The news disappointed victims' loved ones, who had been hoping the case would be brought to trial.
"It's a lot of dashed hopes," said John Livingstone, whose common-law wife, former Pahoa resident Lahe'enae Gay, was among those killed. "It's just part of the whole tragedy and something you have to deal with."
Gay, Terence Freitas, of Los Angeles, and Ingrid Washinawatok, of New York City, were kidnapped in Colombia in February 1999 and later shot to death. Their bodies were found across the border in Venezuela.
The three were in Colombia to help set up a school system for the 5,000-member Uwa Indian tribe, whose lands sit in the country's eastern plains bordering Venezuela.
U.S. Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said yesterday that the case against Nelson Vargas Rueda was dismissed because the prosecution had been unable to produce two key witnesses.
Vargas was returned to Colombia on Friday after spending more than a year in a U.S. jail, said an official with Colombia's secret police who asked not to be named.
"It's been five years," Livingstone said. "It's very disappointing to have it come this far and not have the evidence secured. ... I don't think that there's much that they can do if they can't find the evidence."
But New York resident Ali El-Issa, husband of Washinawatock, said he questions why the witnesses who were integral to the case against Vargas were not brought to the United States during the initial investigation.
"This is very sad," said El-Issa yesterday in a telephone interview. "If there's a case, you protect the witnesses. ... We (victims' families) will never forget this thing. Sooner or later, we have to ask the U.S. government what happened to the witnesses."
Vargas was among six suspected members of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, indicted in April 2002 in a U.S. federal court. He was sent to the United States in May 2003 with the approval of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
Although Vargas was convicted in Colombian courts on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization, his lawyers have always maintained he had nothing to do with the killing of the three Americans.
They said he was confused with a rebel known only by his alias "The Pig," who allegedly played a key role in the murders.
Vargas is being held by the secret police and will be transferred to a Colombian prison to serve out an earlier sentence for his membership in the FARC, which has been trying to topple the government for 40 years.
Star-Bulletin reporter Mary Vorsino and the Associated Press contributed to this report.