Father of Colombia plane crash children arrested amid custody battle

Manuel Ranoque is engaged in a custody battle for the four children

Colombian authorities on Friday arrested the father of two of the four Indigenous children who survived a plane crash earlier in June.

The four siblings were found alive by Colombian soldiers nearly 40 days after their plane crashed in the Amazon rainforest on 1 May.

While the Colombian prosecutor’s office confirmed the arrest of Manuel Ranoque, they did not give details on the case or the reason for his arrest, but he has previously been the subject of allegations of domestic abuse from the children’s maternal grandfather.

“We learned of the capture of the father of two Mucutuy minor children and we believe that the prosecutor’s office has operated within the full framework of the law,” said Astrid Eliana Cáceres, director of the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare.

Father of one-year-old Cristin Neriman Ranoque Mucutuy, four-year-old Tien Noriel Ranoque Mucutuy, and stepfather of 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy and nine-year-old Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, Mr Ranoque has been involved in a legal battle for the custody of the children.

The grandfather of the children has accused Mr Ranoque of abusing the mother of the four children, who was travelling on the plane that crashed and died four days later.

He alleged that the children would sometimes hide in the forest to escape beatings when Mr Ranoque was drunk.

“Once, he hit my daughter with a machete,” Mr Mucutuy told reporters earlier in June, according to the Associated Press. “Another time, Lesly hid in the forest with her siblings for three days to protect them from the beatings when [Mr Ranoque] arrived home with alcohol breath and started hitting them without mercy.”

Prior to his arrest Mr Ranoque acknowledged to reporters that there had been unspecified problems at home, but dismissed them as private and not “gossip” for the world.

When asked if he had assaulted his wife, he replied: “Verbally all of a sudden, yes. Physically, very little, because we did more fight of words."

One of the four Indigenous children who were found alive is stretchered out of a plane upon landing at the CATAM military base in Bogota (AFP via Getty Images)

The four siblings have been in the custody of Colombia’s child protection agency since being released from the hospital.

The children were travelling with their mother in a Cessna 206 plane to Bogotá to meet Mr Ranoque when it crashed on 1 May near the Guaviare province.

Their mother Magdalena Mucutuy, as well as the plane’s pilot, died in the accident.

According to El Tiempo, Mr Ranoque, who is related to a local political leader, previously lived in the indigenous reserve of Puerto Sábalo with his family.

He had to flee the community on foot after receiving threats from crime groups operating in the area. Mr Ranoque completed his odyssey through the jungle and eventually arrived in Bogotá.

He reportedly found a job and saved money for a month and a half to afford his family’s transport from their remote community to the Colombian capital.

The 40-day search for the children captivated Colombia after it emerged that they appeared to have survived the crash.

The plane had been on a route between Araracuara in the Amazonas province and San Jose del Guaviare for the first leg of the trip when it disappeared.

Manuel Ranoque, in a black and white T-shirt, the father of the two youngest of the four Indigenous children who were found alive after being lost for 40 days (AFP via Getty Images)

The plane wasn’t found until two weeks later on 16 May in the rainforest, as weather conditions delayed search operations. While the remains of the three adults on the plane were located, the children weren’t there.

For more than a month, the children survived by eating cassava flour and seeds as well as some fruits they found in the rainforest, which they were familiar with as members of the Huitoto Indigenous group.

Soldiers in helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, and planes fired off flares at night to illuminate the ground for crews searching around the clock. Rescuers also used speakers to blast a message recorded by the children’s grandmother telling them to stay in one place.

The children were finally found on 9 June and transported by helicopter to Bogotá and then to a military hospital.