French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt left Bogota late on Thursday bound for France and a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy one day after her jungle rescue from six years in rebel captivity.
Betancourt, who was snatched with three US hostages and 11 Colombians from the grip of the FARC rebels on Wednesday by Colombian soldiers, had earlier held a tearful reunion with her son and daughter at Bogota airport.
“I wanted to feel them, touch them, look at them ... They are so beautiful,” she said of Melanie and Lorenzo, who were 16 and 13 when she was captured in February 2002 while campaigning for the country’s presidency.
PHOTO: AP
“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 exclaimed, euphoric despite not sleeping a wink on her first night of freedom in six years.
Her children and her former husband Fabrice Delloye arrived earlier in the day on a special flight from France together with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and she flew back to Paris with them late on Thursday.
A day after her rescue, Betancourt urged Colombia and the international community to keep working to free the hundreds of other hostages still held by Colombia’s FARC rebels, Latin America’s most fearsome leftwing insurgency.
The three US military contractors released in the raid were also to be reunited with their families in San Antonio, Texas, after being held by the FARC for more than five years.
US military doctors said that Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell, employees of US defense contractor Northrop Grumman captured while on a narcotics surveillance mission in Colombia, were all in good shape and had proved to be very resilient after physical and psychological checkups.
“They’re in great spirits and we’re continuing the medical evaluation process as we speak,” Colonel Jackie Hayes told a press conference.
In Bogota, the seven Colombian soldiers and four police officers who were rescued — some after more than 10 years in captivity — received rapturous welcomes at ceremonies complete with mariachi bands and streets bedecked with banners.
The country was in a celebratory mood after the cunning rescue mission, which went off bloodlessly in a huge triumph for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s long battle against the leftist rebel army.
France too was celebrating the news, after Betancourt became a household name in the country thanks to a relentless campaign for her release.
The 46-year-old politician was expected to be treated to a hero’s welcome yesterday in Paris, the city where she grew up, studied and raised her two children with Delloye.
Sarkozy, who made Betancourt’s release a top priority, was to welcome her personally.
Betancourt, who is Catholic, 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 said. “It is a meeting that one cannot pass up.”
Betancourt admitted she had been taken by surprise by the army operation.
Betancourt said the hostages did not know that rebels who had come to move them to a new hideout were actually Colombian soldiers in disguise.
It was only when they were in the air that the chief of the operation said “We are the national army and you are all free,” she said.
“And the helicopter almost fell because we started jumping. We screamed, we cried, we hugged. We couldn’t believe it.”
Uribe praised the “magnificent work” of the rescue team and compared the operation “to the greatest epics in the history of man.”
In the 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 Web site.
The agency urged FARC to “not waste a historic opportunity” to hold negotiations that “would lead to a political exit to this conflict.”
Former Cuban president Fidel Castro meanwhile praised the rescue mission and condemned the FARC for holding civilians, saying their detention was cruel and “no revolutionary purpose could justify it.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS