Colombia Plucks Hostages From Rebels’ Grasp

Ms. Betancourt has been freed. Details about the operation are still ambiguous. She has publicly thanked the international media for her survival, as without their constant attention she may have been abandoned long ago by the Colombian authorities.

Also freed in the sophisticated rescue effort were the three US contractors who went down with their surveillance plane over FARC controlled Amazon territory. They have already left Colombia and are arriving back to the US, after spending several years as hostages of the FARC.

This is spectacular news, and more evidence that the FARC are collapsing as a disciplined and impenetrable force.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Colombian commandos in disguise spirited 15 hostages to freedom on Wednesday, including Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician held for six years, and three American military contractors.

“I never expected to get out of there alive,” said Ms. Betancourt, 46, her voice sounding frail but charged with excitement, in comments broadcast on the radio.

On Colombian television, Ms. Betancourt wept and smiled as she recounted a chain of events that seemed scripted for film, complete with Colombian agents infiltrating guerrilla camps and borrowing Israeli tracking technology to zero in on their target.

Posted by manyhues
I believe I found GNN and started reading from these pages during the 2000 election fiasco, but I started this manyhues blog on September 11, 2005, while working on pulp and wood products industry issues in Southern Chile. I posted another series of blogs...