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The father of Luis D\u00edaz, a Colombian soccer star for the English club Liverpool, was freed on <\/strong>Thursday <\/strong>after he was kidnapped by a guerrilla group, Colombian officials said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe report with joy the release of Don Luis Manuel D\u00edaz,\u201d the Colombian government\u2019s commission for peace talks said in a statement<\/a> on Thursday morning. \u201cWe hope that he will soon regain his tranquillity, disturbed by an act that should never have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n It was not immediately clear what was exchanged, if anything, for the elder Mr. D\u00edaz\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n A helicopter with a handful of representatives from a local Catholic church<\/a> and a United Nations mission in Colombia, along with a medic, picked up Mr. D\u00edaz, 56, in a rural area of Barrancas \u2014 which is in La Guajira, a region of northern Colombia \u2014 and took him about 55 miles southeast to the city of Valledupar, government and rescue officials said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was obviously emotional to be reunited with his family,\u201d Carlos Ruiz Massieu, the special representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in Colombia, told The New York Times. \u201cHe needs more in-depth medical analysis after a situation like this, but he looked good in general.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Both of Mr. D\u00edaz\u2019s parents were kidnapped<\/a> on Oct. 28 by armed men from a gas station in their hometown, Barrancas. His mother, Cilenis Marulanda, was rescued hours later, but her husband, Luis Manuel D\u00edaz, remained captive.<\/p>\n The Colombian national police and the military mobilized to find Mr. D\u00edaz amid fears that the kidnappers might have taken him from Barrancas across the border to Venezuela.<\/p>\n Five days later, the National Liberation Army<\/a>, a guerrilla group, took responsibility for the abduction. The outfit, known as the E.L.N., is the largest remaining rebel group in Colombia\u2019s 60-year internal conflict and operates in the countryside.<\/p>\n In an announcement published by local news outlets<\/a>, Jos\u00e9 Manuel Mart\u00ednez Quiroz, who was identified as the commander of the northern front of the E.L.N., said the group had commands with \u201ceconomic missions and one of them\u201d took the elder Mr. D\u00edaz, who is known as Mane. But it said he would be freed because he was the family member of \u201ca great athlete whom all Colombians love.\u201d<\/p>\n Although kidnappings for ransom and extortion in Colombia have resurged in recent years after a lull, E.L.N.\u2019s initial statement did not make any demands in exchange for the release of Mr. D\u00edaz.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Three days later, the E.L.N. blamed the Colombian military for the delay. In a statement<\/a>, the group said on Sunday that it was trying to avoid incidents with the Colombian authorities, but that the area remained militarized with flyovers and arriving troops.<\/p>\n The situation, it said, \u201cdoes not allow the execution of the liberation plan quickly and safely.\u201d <\/p>\n The following day, the military announced<\/a> that it was withdrawing from the region where Mr. D\u00edaz was believed to be held. But when he had still not been freed by Tuesday, Otty Pati\u00f1o, Colombia\u2019s chief negotiator in peace talks with the E.L.N., told reporters<\/a> that there was \u201cno excuse\u201d for the delay. He said the guerrilla group had been in contact with the United Nations and Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The kidnapping captured the attention of a country of nearly 52 million not just because soccer is the most popular sport there, but also because it stoked concerns about increasing insecurity and whether the government was doing enough to stop it. In public pleas and in marches in Mr. D\u00edaz\u2019s hometown, Colombians called for his father\u2019s release.<\/p>\n The Colombian government, under President Gustavo Petro, had been negotiating a peace treaty with the E.L.N., and a six-month cease-fire was to begin in August. But after the elder Mr. D\u00edaz was kidnapped, Mr. Petro said<\/a> that the E.L.N. had committed an act that \u201cgoes against the very peace process.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After Mr. D\u00edaz was freed, the Colombian peace commission negotiating with the E.L.N. said that the recent kidnapping had \u201cplunged our talks into a critical situation\u201d and called for all other people held captive to be freed immediately.<\/p>\n The E.L.N.\u2019s top commander, Eli\u00e9cer Herlinto Chamorro, known by his nom de guerre, Antonio Garc\u00eda, said last week in a statement, according to local reports<\/a>, that the elder Mr. D\u00edaz\u2019s kidnapping had been \u201can error\u201d and called his son, 26, a symbol for Colombia.<\/p>\n The younger Mr. D\u00edaz, who is known as Lucho, has shone for his country\u2019s national team<\/a>. He rose from playing for his local Indigenous team to larger clubs in Colombia, eventually landing at Liverpool with a contract reportedly worth more than $60 million. Mr. D\u00edaz\u2019s father was a gifted amateur player in Barrancas and trained his son. <\/p>\n The Liverpool player sat out the first game after his father\u2019s kidnapping but returned to action on Sunday. After scoring a late game-tying goal in a 1-1 draw against Luton, he pulled up his jersey to reveal an undershirt that read, \u201cFreedom for Papa\u201d in Spanish.<\/p>\n After the game, he pleaded for his father\u2019s release.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery second, every minute, our distress grows,\u201d he wrote in a statement<\/a>. \u201cMy mother, my brothers and I are desperate, anguished and without words to describe what we\u2019re feeling. This suffering will only end when we have him back home.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, Mr. D\u00edaz received his wish.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n