There was one awful moment when General Freddy Padilla de Leon, Colombia’s
most senior military officer, feared that months of secret planning to free
Ingrid Betancourt from six years of jungle misery had been lost to a
guerrilla answering the call of nature.
Padilla’s troops were in position along the Apaporis River, deep in the
wilderness of Guaviare province, 400 miles southeast of Bogota. Weeks
earlier, Colombian special forces had infiltrated the region and spotted
three American and two Colombian hostages bathing in the river as their
captors watched.
Outmanned and at that point uncertain about the whereabouts of the other
hostages, the soldiers kept their distance. With the help of US intelligence
agents, the Colombians later planted video and motion-sensor devices at
several points along the river.
“We had one alarm,” the general told The Sunday Times in an exclusive briefing
on the daring mission that last week plucked Betancourt and 14 other
hostages from the heart of the jungle controlled by the extreme left-wing
Farc guerrilla movement.
“One of the guerrillas walked into the jungle to go to the bathroom and kicked
our device,” he said. At a military command and control centre monitoring
the area, officers held their breath. But they detected no sign that the
guerrillas realised they were being watched. Operation Checkmate was still
alive.
The extraordinary story of the rescue of a 46-year-old Colombian politician
who became a worldwide symbol of hostage suffering reads like a Hollywood
script too implausible even for a Rambo film.
Betancourt, who has dual French nationality, had barely stepped off the plane
to a heroine’s reception in Paris on Friday when reports started circulating
that the Colombians had lied about the military operation, that a huge
ransom had been paid, that Israel’s Mossad security service had been
involved and that Betancourt was incidental to a CIA deal to recover three
American military contractors seized in 2003.
Padilla stood up from a cream leather sofa in his spacious office at the
Ministry of Defence in Bogota. “Yes, yes,” he said, “people will always say
it’s impossible that Colombians did this on their own. Of course the gringos
have to be present.”
He beckoned me into his war room, a windowless annexe dominated by a huge map
table covered with flags and symbols showing rebel positions in Guaviare
province and the movements of security forces pursuing them. For the next
hour he laid out in intricate detail the planning, training and execution of
one of the greatest military wheezes in Latin American history.
It was a bold military gambit and a masterpiece of theatrical fraud. Farc
guerrillas were tricked into giving up Betancourt without a shot being
fired, a scenario that had seemed unthinkable for a lethal group of several
thousand controlling a $200m-a-year drugs business.
Betancourt was an obscure but ambitious Colombian senator campaigning as a
long-shot presidential candidate when she was seized in 2002. For six years
and four months she endured unthinkable hardship and crippling
disappointments as other hostages were released.
The more the world demanded her release, the more valuable she seemed to
become to her captors. Punished for efforts to escape, she spent long
periods chained by her neck to trees, suffered from untreated infections and
intestinal upsets and endured long marches over punishing terrain.
It was a rare convergence of military audacity and political will that finally
enabled the Colombian army to strike at the guerrilla strongholds, which are
shielded by jungle-smothered mountains.
After 40 years of fighting leftist revolutionaries, the Colombian military had
at last infiltrated Farc’s hierarchy over the past year, said Padilla: “Our
intelligence chiefs began to think it would be possible to direct our forces
at the rescue of hostages.”
Several previous rescue attempts had ended in disaster and, deep in the
jungle, Betancourt worried that another botched attempt might cost her and
the other hostages their lives. American, French and Venezuelan officials
were also pressing for negotiation rather than military force.
Yet the Colombians were encouraged by an intelligence breakthrough when
security forces crossed the border into Ecuador last March and killed Raul
Reyes, a prominent Farc leader, and returned to Bogota with a laptop
computer which held extensive details of his group’s operations.
This, and intelligence from moles inside Farc, provided Padilla’s officers
with an insight into how the guerrillas organised their forces and moved the
hostages around the jungle.
By the end of May, Padilla said, officers had concluded that “maybe” Farc
could be tricked into gathering the hostages at a place where they might be
rescued. Military intelligence agents were recruited to act as guerrillas,
helicopter pilots, journalists and aid workers – but were not told why.
Last month the general presented his political masters with a daring rescue
plan using white helicopters similar to those used in previous hostage deals
mediated by Venezuela. This time, though, they would be manned by Colombian
agents in disguise.
Juan Manuel Santos, the defence minister, agreed immediately. For President
Alvaro Uribe, a staunch ally of George W Bush, a difficult decision loomed.
If the operation went wrong, Padilla said, “we would be in trouble with
France and America”.
American officials were consulted and some doubted the Colombians could pull
it off. A US official told The New York Times last week: “More than one
person said, ‘My God, this looks like a movie plot’.”
Uribe, who has become popular at home for Colombia’s economic growth and for
his successes against Farc, listened carefully as Padilla outlined his plan.
Everything hinged on fooling the guerrilla group holding Betancourt into
believing that Farc’s central command wanted the hostages moved.
“And the president said yes,” Padilla said, slapping his thigh for emphasis.
“He also said he was taking personal responsibility for the decision. It was
a very emotional moment.” It was time to tell the bogus helicopter crews the
true nature of their mission. “I talked to them one by one,” the general
said. “I told them they could easily be killed or taken hostage for 10
years. I asked them if they wanted to help to free Ingrid. Every one of them
said yes.”
For three weeks the teams trained in isolation to prevent any leaks. They even
took acting classes to prepare them for their roles. Last Monday the
helicopters and their crews moved into position deep in Guaviare province.
They were equipped with panic buttons in case anything went wrong. If the
operation was successful, the pilots were to radio a single message – “Viva
Colombia”.
On Tuesday Padilla flew to a jungle command and control post and, by dawn on
Wednesday, it was clear that the first part of the intelligence operation
had succeeded.
Colombian agents who had infiltrated Farc sent messages to the leader of the
unit holding Betancourt, telling him to gather three groups of hostages at a
clearing in the jungle close to the point where previous Venezuelan missions
had landed.
The guerrilla leader, known by the codename Cesar, had been having difficulty
communicating with Farc leaders and appeared only too ready to follow
instructions that he believed had come directly from Alfonso Cano, the
group’s senior commander.
Special forces commandos melted into the jungle around the planned rendezvous.
“They were not so close as to be seen, but near enough to stop an escape,”
said Padilla.
There was one last snag. Among the hostages were soldiers, policemen and three
burly Americans who had no idea they were about to be rescued. Their captors
told them they were being transferred to a different part of the country.
Betancourt told Padilla later that she thought the journey might present “an
opportunity to escape”.
The rescue mission could have ended in catastrophe if the hostages had
unknowingly fought their would-be rescuers. So for a few minutes the
hostages were handcuffed by their saviours. Cesar and his deputy climbed on
board. The helicopters lifted off and within moments the two guerrillas had
been stripped and disabled. Betancourt was free.
She and her family arrived at a military airfield in Paris on Friday to be
greeted by the president. Nicolas Sarkozy had promised on the day of his
election victory last year to make Betancourt’s freedom a priority of his
presidency. She rewarded him by saying: “I owe you my life.”
Sarkozy undoubtedly deserves credit for keeping her plight in the public eye.
Yet conspicuously absent from Padilla’s account was any mention of French
assistance. Indeed, the Colombians appear to have gone to some lengths not
to inform Paris in advance, in case it tried to halt the mission. Sarkozy
was informed only when the rescue was over.
For Betancourt, who before her kidnapping was a minor political figure, a rich
new life beckons. She has survived tarantulas, scorpions and crippling
tropical diseases. She almost died from a stomach ulcer and at one point
wanted to commit suicide. She talked last week about the indignities of her
captivity – trying to prevent her towel slipping as guerrillas watched her
bathe and having to go to the lavatory behind bushes at night while a male
guerrilla held a lantern.
Yet already she has hinted that she might revive her presidential ambitions.
One congressman close to Uribe told me that if the constitution is changed
to allow him to run for a third term – as many Colombians appear to wish –
he might chose Betancourt as his vice-presidential running mate.
Some in Bogota think it was Betancourt’s fault that she got kidnapped – she
ignored government warnings about campaigning in a rebel-infested province –
but there was national joy over the pictures of her reunion with her son,
Lorenzo, 19, and her daughter, Melanie, 22. Relegated to the background was
her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, who later said simply: “We talked all
night.”
Mostly there was a sense of pride that Colombian forces may have delivered a
fatal blow to Farc fortunes and four decades of slaughter may soon be over.
“Farc is in a bad situation,” said Padilla. “This is not the beginning of
the end, as Churchill said. I think we’re nearer to the end of the end.”
Additional reporting: Matthew Campbell, Paris
