SAN ANTONIO -- It has been 11 months since Americans Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes gained their freedom back. Both Gonsalves and Stansell took time to share their ordeal with students at St. Mary's Center for Terrorism Law.

The men were working as government contractors in Colombia when they were taken captive and held for five and a half years by members of the FARC, a leftist rebel group that is figthing a revolution.

"These are people who should have helped us when we came out of that crashed plane; instead, they abducted us and they executed two of our crew members," Gonsalves said. "I still have flashbacks of that dark, green, humid, slimy place."

While captive, the men were forced to march day and night through the Colombian jungles. They were tortured, forced to sleep in cages and were chained to each other for two years.

"That's three links of chain; he and I had five meters of this around our neck," Gonsalves said.

Stansell is upset with how President Barack Obama is fighting the war on terrorism and feels that what FARC is doing should be a wakeup call to Americans and the war on terror.

"We're going to have to make some hard decisions in a hard manner if we want to protect ourselves and protect the sovereignity of this country," Stansell said.