15 hostages freed after Colombia tricks guerrillas

The presidential candidate was campaigning when she was captured six years ago.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia freed Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors from leftist guerrillas on Wednesday, saying military spies tricked rebels into giving them up without a single shot fired.

Betancourt, who was seized while campaigning for president six long years ago, appeared thin but healthy as she strode down the stairs of a military plane and held her mother in a long embrace. She called the operation that rescued her and 14 others “absolutely impeccable.”

“They got us out grandly,” Betancourt told Colombian army radio.

Eleven Colombian police and soldiers were also freed in the rescue, the most serious blow ever dealt to the 44-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which considered the four hostages their most valuable bargaining chips. The FARC is already reeling from the deaths of key commanders and the loss of much of the territory it once held.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said military intelligence agents infiltrated the guerrilla ranks and led the local commander in charge of the hostages, alias Cesar, to believe they were going to take them by helicopter to Alfonso Cano, the guerrillas’ supreme leader.

The hostages, who had been divided into three groups, were taken to a rallying point where two helicopters piloted by Colombian military agents were waiting. The helicopters took off with the hostages, Cesar and one other rebel, and those two “were neutralized” during the flight, Santos said.

Betancourt said her hands and feet were bound on the way to the helicopters, and that only when the choppers had taken off did military crew members reveal their identity.

The rest of the rebel captors had dropped off the hostages and retreated into the jungle. The army let them escape “in hopes that they will free the rest of the hostages,” Santos said. The government says the FARC still holds about 700 hostages.

The operation, Santos said, “will go into history for its audacity and effectiveness.”

The French-Colombian Betancourt wore military fatigues and a floppy camouflage hat as she and the other Colombian hostages joined top military leaders for a triumphant ceremony on the tarmac of a Bogota airport. She hugged her husband, Juan Carlos LeCompte, before taking the hand of Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.

In Paris, her son Lorenzo Delloye-Betancourt called her release “the most beautiful news of my life.”

The Americans — Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell — were immediately turned over to U.S. officials in Colombia and were heading to the United States soon, according to a statement from their employer, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. They had been the longest-held American hostages in the world.

Gonsalves’ father George was mowing the yard of his Hebron, Conn., home when an excited neighbor relayed the news he had seen on television: “I didn’t know how to stop my lawnmower. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it.”

“We’re still teary-eyed and not quite have our wits about us,” said Stansell’s stepmother, Lynne.

U.S. President George W. Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy congratulated Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Santos renewed the government’s offer to negotiate with the reeling rebel movement, who many believe is nearing the end of its four-decade fight. Battlefield losses and widespread desertions have cut rebel numbers in half to about 9,000 as the United States has poured billions of dollars in military aid into Colombia.

This year, historic leader Manuel Marulanda died of a reported heart attack, and two other top commanders were killed. The rest are hunkered down in remote jungle and mountain hideouts, unable to communicate effectively.

Santos said Colombia had infiltrated the rebels’ seven-man ruling secretariat but did not elaborate.

U.S. presidential candidate John McCain said Uribe had told him in advance of the rescue plans while he was campaigning in Colombia. “It’s a very high-risk operation,” he said. “I congratulate President Uribe, the military and the nation of Colombia.”

Betancourt, 46, was abducted in February 2002. The Americans were captured a year after Betancourt when their drug surveillance plane went down in rebel-held jungle.

In the five years since their abduction, their families had received only two “proof of life” videos, the latest in November.