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BOGOTA, Columbia: French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and
14 other hostages were rescued from Marxist FARC guerrillas on
Thursday by Colombian commandos who posed as rebels and flew them
out of the jungle by helicopter.
In a dramatic and bloodless operation, the
Colombian Army put an end to Betancourt’s six-year-long captivity
and also rescued three US Defense contractors, held by the rebels
since 2003, and 11 Colombian soldiers.
“To all of you Colombians, for all of you
French who have been with us, that accompanied us in the world, that
helped us to remain alive, that helped the world to know what was
going on, thank you,” Betancourt said after her release.
According to her, the hostages did not know that
their new captors on Wednesday (Thursday in Manila) were Colombian
soldiers in disguise, some wearing T-shirts bearing the portrait of
legendary revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
The disguised soldiers made the hostages board a
white helicopter with their wrists bound, saying they were being
transferred to another rebel hideout.
It was only when they were in the air that
“the chief of operations said, ‘We are the national army and you
are all free.’ And the helicopter almost fell because we started
jumping. We screamed, we cried, we hugged. We couldn’t believe
it,” Betancourt said after arriving at a Bogota military airport.
She embraced her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, as she
descended from the plane, looking fresh and happy, dressed in an
Army camouflage vest and hat.
Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos
said the rescue, which came after a military agent infiltrated the
rebels, “will no doubt go down in history for its audacity.”
Betancourt, who has dual citizenship and who was
captured as she was campaigning for the Colombian presidency,
described it as a “perfect operation.”
Speaking in French and Spanish, she thanked
everyone for keeping their plight alive.
“We were able to dream. We were able to keep
hope alive because we heard our loved ones” on the radio, she
said, according to a translation on CNN.
US hostages Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and
Keith Stansell, captured in 2003 when their plane crashed during a
US Defense Department anti-drug mission, arrived back in the United
States early Thursday.
The men, employees of US defense contractor
Northrop Grumman, landed at a military base in San Antonio, Texas,
and were immediately taken by helicopter to a US Army medical
center, television pictures showed.
World leaders were swift to welcome the news,
and celebrations broke out on the streets of Colombian cities as
residents hailed the brazen jungle rescue as a bright spot for a
country plagued for decades by kidnappings.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who spoke with
Betancourt just after her release, praised the “magnificent
work” of the rescue team and compared the operation “to the
greatest epics in the history of man.”
There had been mounting fears for Betancourt’s
health following the release of a video showing her looking thin and
frail, but her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, said in Bogota he was
surprised to see her looking so well.
Betancourt’s teenage son, Lorenzo Delloye,
told Agence France-Presse it was “an indescribable joy” to hear
that his 46-year-old mother was free.
US President George W. Bush congratulated Bogota
on the releases, telling Uribe he was a “strong leader,” while
French President Nicolas Sarkozy also thanked Uribe and called on
the FARC to end their “absurd” struggle. FARC is the Spanish
acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, a
self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla
organization.
The US Ambassador to Bogota, William Brownfield,
told CNN that Washington knew beforehand about the operation and had
provided “technical support” to what was essentially “a
Colombian operation.”
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and
members of Betancourt’s family left France for Colombia on a plane
late Wednesday. Betancourt will likely return to France on the
plane, Sarkozy’s office said.
As congratulations also poured in from across
Latin America and Europe, street celebrations broke out in Bogota
with thousands of cars, their horns blaring, packing onto the roads
causing huge traffic jams.
Hundreds of people flooded onto the streets
brandishing the national flag and shouting, “Free, free, free.”
Betancourt was the most well known of about 700
people believed to have been taken captive by the FARC, a
four-decade-old insurgency which figures on US and European Union
lists of terrorist organizations.
-- AFP
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