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PARIS: Freed Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt said she had
stared into the “abyss” during her six-year hostage ordeal as
she headed to Paris for a meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy on
Friday.
Newly reunited with her son and daughter a day
after her jungle rescue by the Colombian army, Betancourt, who has
dual French-Colombian nationality, left Bogota late Thursday for
France, where she was set for a hero’s welcome.
Speaking to French radio before she boarded the
plane, the 46-year-old former presidential candidate said she was
chained up night and day for three years by her rebel captors, with
only her Catholic faith as a solace.
“I was in chains all the time, 24 hours a day,
for three years,” she told Europe 1 radio. “I tried to wear
those chains . . . with dignity, even if I felt that it was
unbearable.”
Freed on Wednesday along with three American
hostages and 11 Colombians from the grip of Marxist FARC rebels in a
bloodless operation by the Colombian army, Betancourt said she had
suffered “moments of real crisis, hardship and abuse.”
FARC is the Spanish acronym for Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist
revolutionary organization. It is Latin America’s most fearsome
left-wing insurgency.
Asked whether she was tortured, she replied,
“Yes, yes.” She said she saw her captors’ lapsing into
“diabolical behavior.”
“It was so monstrous that I think they
themselves were disgusted.”
“I think you need tremendous spirituality to
stop yourself falling into the abyss,” she said, adding that she
decided in the helicopter flying her to safety not to reveal the
most “sordid” details of her ordeal.
Betancourt on Thursday held a powerfully
emotional reunion at Bogota airport with her daughter Melanie, 22,
and son Lorenzo, 19, who waged a relentless campaign for their
mother’s release, making her a cause celebre in France.
“I wanted to feel them, touch them, look at
them . . . They are so beautiful,” she said. “I thank God for
this moment. These are my little ones, my pride, my reason for
living, my light, my moon, my stars, for them I wanted to leave the
jungle, to see them again.”
Betancourt’s children were young teenagers
when she was seized in February 2002 while campaigning for
Colombia’s presidency. They were flown to Bogota together with her
ex-husband Fabrice Delloye on a French government flight.
France was celebrating the news of her release,
with Betancourt expected to be treated to a rapturous welcome in
Paris, the city where she grew up, studied and raised her children.
Sarkozy, who made Betancourt’s release a top
priority, was to welcome her personally at 4 p.m. (10 p.m. in
Manila) at a military airport west of Paris, before inviting the
whole family to the Elysee presidential palace.
The Catholic Betancourt, who has called her
release a “miracle of the Virgin Mary,” has also been invited to
a face-to-face meeting with Pope Benedict XVI next week at the
Vatican.
“I don’t have a date set yet, but the
Vatican has confirmed my meeting with the Pope,” she told Agence
France-Presse. “It is a meeting that one cannot pass up.”
Betancourt has urged Colombia and the
international community Thursday to keep working to free the
hundreds of other hostages still held by Colombia’s FARC rebels.
The three US military contractors, Marc
Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell, released in the raid
were also to be reunited with their families in Texas. They were
said by doctors to be in good shape and high spirits.
And in Bogota, the seven Colombian soldiers and
four police officers rescued—some after more than 10 years in
captivity—received rapturous welcomes at ceremonies complete with
mariachi bands.
Colombia was in a celebratory mood after the
cunning rescue mission, a huge triumph in President Alvaro Uribe’s
long battle against the leftist rebel army.
In the humbled rebels’ first reaction since
the rescue, a news outlet close to FARC said they would be open to
peace talks with the Uribe government.
“Definitely the future of Colombia cannot be
civil war,” read the statement on the pro-rebel Anncol news agency
website, which urged FARC to “not waste a historic opportunity.”
Veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro praised the
rescue mission and condemned the FARC for holding civilians, saying
“no revolutionary purpose could justify it.”
-- AFP
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