Freed hostage Betancourt returns to France amid claims Colombian rebels were paid a £10 million ransom
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:31 PM on 04th July 2008
‘I cry with joy,’ Ingrid Betancourt said. And she did.
After six years of being held hostage in the Colombian jungle, the former Colombian presidential candidate and French citizen flew back to her beloved France to be embraced Friday as an icon by the country that raised her.
But her return came amid claims she was released together with three Americans after a £10million ransom was paid. Columbia had said the hostages were released after a daring raid on a rebel compound.
A hero’s welcome - led by President Nicolas Sarkozy - greeted Betancourt from the moment she descended from the plane at the Villacoublay air base southwest of Paris.
A dual French-Colombian citizen, Betancourt was campaigning for Colombia’s presidency when she was kidnapped in 2002.
Betancourt won a hug from Sarkozy - who called her ‘radiant’ - and a kiss from first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
Talking excitedly and smiling broadly, they were joined by Betancourt’s children, other family members and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
‘It’s a very, very moving moment for me: Breathing the air of France, being with you,’ Betancourt told supporters and reporters gathered on the windswept tarmac. “France is my home and you are my family.”
‘I have cried a lot during this time from pain and indignation. Today, I am crying from joy,’ she said, her voice choked and eyes moist.
Betancourt’s captivity caused widespread concern in France, and her supporters held candlelight vigils and marches around the country urging efforts to free her from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Her release Wednesday in an ingenious Colombian military operation along with 14 other hostages prompted celebrations around France.
Sarkozy said Betancourt’s rescue sends a message to people in difficult situations that ‘it’s worth it to fight. There is no such thing as inevitability’.
‘All those who suffer, like you, throughout the world should know that … there is a light at the end of the tunnel,’ he said in greeting her. ‘You are free, radiant, with your life ahead of you and surrounded by your family.’
Betancourt, her family and supporters later went to a party at the presidential palace staged in her honor Friday. Hundreds of people, some carrying Colombian or French flags and many with cameras, lined up behind police barriers around the Elysee palace in hopes of getting a glimpse of her.
The celebrations came as Swiss radio reported that leaders of the Colombian FARC rebel movement were paid millions of dollars to free Betancourt and 14 others.
The hostages released on Wednesday by the Colombian army ‘were in reality ransomed for a high price, and the whole operation afterwards was a set-up’, the radio’s French-language channel said.
Enlarge Freed or released? Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe, right, greets Ingrid Betancourt yesterday
Freed or released? Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe, right, greets Ingrid Betancourt yesterday
According to the official version of events, Betancourt was freed from six years of jungle captivity in a perilous commando-style rescue raid.
But the radio station said the United States, which had three of its citizens among those freed, was behind the deal. It put the price of the ransom at some £10 million.
The radio said its source was “close to the events, reliable and tested many times in recent years.”
The report added said the wife of one of the hostages’ guards was the go-between, having been arrested by the Colombian army. She was released to return to the guerrillas, where she persuaded her husband to change sides.
Switzerland, along with France and Spain, has been mediating with the FARC on behalf of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
Betancourt, a Colombian who spent many years living in Paris, became a national hero in France during her captivity.
Support committees were set up around the country to work for her release.
The official version of Wednesday’s operation is that a Colombian army intelligence agent infiltrated the FARC and tricked the rebels into believing their top leader had sent a helicopter to pick up the hostages.
Colombian soldiers posing as FARC guerrillas flew the hostages from a jungle hideout where they had been assembled before revealing their identity.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the rescue ‘was conceived by the Colombians and executed by the Colombians with our full support’, while implying that Washington had provided intelligence and even operational help.
Betancourt was kidnapped by FARC in 2002 while she was campaigning to be president of Colombia.
The top U.S. military officer for Latin America, Admiral Jim Stavridis, head of United States Southern Command, said the rescue of Americans Thomas Howes, Marc
Gonsalves and Keith Stansell had been ‘a priority of this command’.
The three were seized by the rebels as they conducted an anti-drug mission for the Pentagon in February 2003.
Pope Benedict XVI sent word Friday that he would be happy to meet with Betancourt as soon as his schedule permits. He had met with Betancourt’s mother at the Vatican in February.
Betancourt spent much of her childhood in France and attended university at Paris’ Institut d’Etudes Politiques. Her own children - Melanie, 22, and Lorenzo, 19 - reached adulthood in Paris during her captivity.
She was reunited with her children in Colombia on Thursday. Interviewed by Europe-1 radio before her arrival in France, said she was proud of how her children had forged ‘extraordinary characters’ in her absence.
She recalled humiliating treatment by the FARC, saying she had to wear chains 24 hours a day for three years.
‘When you have a chain around your neck, you have to keep your head down and try to accept your fate without succumbing entirely to humiliation, without forgetting who you are,’ she said.
‘I reached a moment where I understood that death was a possibility,’ she said in another interview with France-2 television. ‘I had seen my companions die, I knew that death arrives very, very quickly in the jungle.’
Sarkozy made freeing Betancourt a priority the night he was elected France’s president in May 2007.
The previous government of Jacques Chirac also worked for her release, and then-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is a longtime friend of Betancourt’s.
Betancourt’s release was a big image boost for Sarkozy, with even his rivals acknowledging that his diplomatic efforts kept up the pressure on Colombia to find ways to get her released.
