A Colombian congressman held hostage by Marxist guerrillas for eight years escaped through the jungle with one of his captors in another blow to Latin America’s oldest insurgency.

Wearing a tattered, black T-shirt and sporting a tangled grey beard, Óscar Lizcano, 62, and the rebel leader known by the alias Isaza walked for three days before reaching an army post near the town of San José del Palmar yesterday. Isaza, a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), surrendered to the Government troops.

“My legs are swollen,” Dr Lizcano announced in a weak voice, as he slumped exhausted in a chair. “Please understand that if I am incoherent, it is from being out of the habit of speaking,” he told reporters after he was flown to an airbase in Cali for medical examination. “I was really sick,” he added.

The Colombian authorities, who claimed initially to have rescued Dr Lizcano in a military operation, conceded that he had done all the work himself.

“He fled and the two went looking for authorities, trekked across the jungle day and night for three days, until this morning they stumbled upon the army’s 14th Brigade. That’s when the release, the rescue of Dr Lizcano took place,” Juan Manuel Santos, the Defence Minister, said.

Martha de Lizcano, the wife of Dr Lizcano, wept upon being told the news. “This nightmare is coming to an end. It’s been eight years of great suffering,” she said.

Dr Lizcano, an economist, was abducted on August 5, 2000, in the village of Riosucio in Caldas province, northwest of the capital, Bogotá. At the time of his kidnapping he was a representative in Congress for the Conservative Party.

In April, Farc released a video proving that Dr Lizcano was still alive. He pleaded with President Chávez of Venezuela to mediate to do “the utmost to get us out of here because we are rotting in the jungle”.

The escape of Dr Lizcano came after Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician, three Americans and a group of other hostages were rescued in a surprise military operation in July. In December Clara Rojas, Ms Betancourt's former campaign manager, who had a child with a guerrilla while in captivity, was rescued by the army after five years as a hostage.

Farc was once a powerful rebel army that controlled large areas of the country. It has at least 20 politicians, police officers and soldiers, some of whom have been held for more than a decade.

The organisation has been weakened seriously in the past two years by a military that has become more professional and agile, thanks largely to US training, advice and intelligence-gathering. President Uribe said that Isaza, 28, would be rewarded for helping to free the politician and helped to move to France, which has promised asylum to Farc deserters.

High-profile FARC kidnappings:

August 5, 2000: Rep. Oscar Tulio Lizcano of the Conservative Party is kidnapped by rebels while inaugurating a soccer pitch during campaigning in his home province of Caldas.

February 23, 2002: French-Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt is abducted in a rebel stronghold in southern Colombia. Her campaign chief, Clara Rojas, is abducted with her.

February 13, 2003: A U.S. surveillance flight goes down in rebel territory with Americans Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Janis aboard. Janis is shot and killed. The other three are captured.

August 16, 2007: Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez says he is willing to help mediate peace talks between the guerrillas and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

November 21, 2007: Bogota cancels Chavez's mediation role after Chavez speaks directly with the head of Colombia's army, disobeying an order from Uribe.

November 30, 2007: Colombian authorities release videos of the three Americans and Betancourt confiscated during a raid on three suspected members of the FARC's urban militias in Bogota.

December 19, 2007: French Foreign Minister Francois Fillon says his country is willing to take in FARC rebels as part of a deal to secure the release of hostages.

January 10, 2008: The FARC frees Betancourt aide Rojas and former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez, who are flown to Venezuela.

March 1, 2008: Colombian security forces raid a FARC camp in Ecuador and kill rebel commander Raul Reyes, who had been in contact with French and Swiss envoys over the possible release of Betancourt.

July 2, 2008: Posing as members of a fake international humanitarian group, military intelligence agents trick FARC rebels into handing over Betancourt, the three American contractors and 11 other hostages without a shot being fired.

October 10, 2008: A guerrilla defector provides information on the whereabouts of the kidnapped lawmaker Lizcano.

October 26, 2008: Lizcano walks to freedom along with a young rebel commander who had been his jailer. The two had fled a jungle camp three days earlier. The guerrilla is rewarded with asylum in France for him and his girlfriend.

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