07/03/2008
Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. hostages held for years by guerrillas were rescued on Wednesday after soldiers posing as aid workers duped their captors into putting them on a helicopter.
The rescue -- without a shot being fired -- was a huge blow to Latin America's oldest insurgency, already badly weakened by President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed campaign to defeat the rebels and the cocaine trade fueling Colombia's conflict.
Betancourt, 46, a dual French-Colombian citizen and former presidential candidate, was the highest-profile captive held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, and had been a held in the Colombian jungle for six years.
"I believe that this is a sign of peace for Colombia, that we can find peace," Betancourt said, weeping as she thanked the Colombian military in her first public comments, carried on Colombian radio station Caracol.
Minutes later, a pale but smiling Betancourt landed at Bogota's air force base, walking down the stairs of the plane and hugging her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, on the runway.
Betancourt had not been seen since a rebel video broadcast last year in which she appeared gaunt and depressed in a jungle camp. The video provoked outrage in Colombia and overseas as former fellow hostages later told how she had been chained up after repeated escape attempts.
She said the hostages were forced onto a helicopter handcuffed, but were then amazed to see their captors disarmed as the aircraft took off, describing an action film ending to her captivity when one army officer said, "You are free."
The operation, from the helicopter's landing to the disarming of the two guerrillas on board, took 22 minutes and 13 seconds, said Gen. Freddy Padilla, head of Colombia's armed forces. The two rebels were in custody.
Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Colombian military intelligence had infiltrated the guerrilla movement in the southern jungle province of Guaviare, where soldiers posed as members of a fictitious aid group that was to fly the hostages by helicopter to a camp to meet a rebel commander.
"It was an intelligence operation comparable with the greatest epics of human history, but without a drop of blood being spilled, without one weapon being fired," Uribe said.
Fifteen long-held kidnap victims were rescued in all.
The FARC has been holding about 40 high-profile hostages it has sought to exchange for jailed rebels. But attempts to reach negotiate their release have failed.
In a late-night televised address, Uribe said he will not rest until all FARC hostages are freed and invited the rebels to talk. Betancourt looked on as he spoke from the presidential palace and then spoke herself, recounting the rescue.
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