MIAMI  Tania Julin remembers hearing the distinct sound of feet racing through the dark Panamanian forest moments before armed masked men burst through the door of the modest hut she shared with her husband.

Ms. Julin and her husband, Mark Rich, were missionaries living in a remote village just miles from the Colombian border when the gunmen  leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC  descended on the village.

At gunpoint, Ms. Julin was ordered to pack a bag for her husband, and then Mr. Rich and two other men, Charles David Mankin and Richard Lee Tenenoff, were marched out of their homes, flanked by the gunmen who chattered in Spanish and fired into the air.

“That was the last time we saw ours husbands,” Ms. Julin said, recalling the night of Jan. 31, 1993.