BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- A suspect thought to be the Colombian rebel leader
                   known as "The Pig" and charged with the politically charged kidnap-murder of three
                   U.S. citizens turned out to be the wrong man, authorities said Friday.

                   "He wasn't the person we were looking for," an embarrassed senior police intelligence
                   official told Reuters.

                   Police had identified the suspect, after his arrest early Thursday in the northeast oil
                   town of Saravena, as Gildardo Gonzalez, a field commander of the Revolutionary
                   Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) known by the alias "El Marrano" (The Pig).

                   But the police officer and the National Registry, which keeps the birth and fingerprint
                   records of all Colombian citizens, said he was a civilian resident of Saravena identified
                   as Nelson Vargas Ruedas.

                   There was no immediate comment on the wrongful arrest from National Police chief
                   Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, who had informed the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
                   (FBI) of Gonzalez's supposed capture Thursday.

                   But the intelligence official said the FBI had been told of the mistake sometime early
                   Friday, hours after Serrano claimed a breakthrough in the killing of Terence Freitas, 24,
                   of Oakland, California, Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, of New York, and Laheenae Gay, 39,
                   of Hawaii.

                   The trio of American activists had been working with U'wa Indians in northeast
                   Arauca province -- in a bid to prevent a U.S. oil company from encroaching on their
                   ancestral lands -- when they were kidnapped in late February 1999 by a FARC rebel
                   unit.

                   Their bullet-riddled bodies were found dumped across the border in Venezuela in early
                   March, in a crime that prompted international outrage.

                   Just one month before the killings the FARC, Latin America's largest and oldest rebel
                   force, opened peace talks with the government to end a long-running war that has
                   taken more than 35,000 lives in the last decade.

                   The slow-moving peace process is still on track. But the murders immediately
                   prompted U.S. State Department officials to break off talks with FARC leaders in Costa
                   Rica, which had been aimed at supporting the process.

                   In a communique issued after the killings, Jorge Briceno, the FARC's chief military
                   strategist, admitted Gonzalez's responsibility in the crime and said he was a renegade
                   field commander who acted without authorization.

                   However, Colombian justice officials investigating the case have implicated both
                   Briceno and his brother, alleging that they personally ordered the murders.

                   FARC rebels are also accused of kidnapping three American missionaries whose fate
                   has been unknown since January 1993, when they were seized just across Colombia's
                   border with Panama.

                      Copyright 2000 Reuters.