BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombian spies tricked leftist rebels into handing over kidnapped presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors Wednesday in a daring helicopter rescue so successful that not a single shot was fired.
Betancourt, who was seized on the campaign trail six years ago, appeared thin but surprisingly healthy as she strode down the stairs of a military plane and held her mother in a long embrace. She said she still aspires to the presidency.
“God, this is a miracle,” Betancourt said. “Such a perfect operation is unprecedented.”
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.
The Americans — Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell — were flown directly to the United States to reunite with their families and undergo tests and treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
They had been the longest-held American hostages in the world.
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 to Alfonso Cano, the guerrillas’ supreme leader.
The hostages, who had been divided in three groups, were taken to a rendezvous where two disguised MI-17 helicopters piloted by Colombian military agents were waiting. Betancourt assumed the pilots were rebels.
But when they were airborne, she looked behind her and saw Cesar, who had treated her so cruelly for so many years, lying on the floor blindfolded.
“The chief of the operation said, ‘We’re the national army. You’re free,’ ” she said. “The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we were jumping up and down, yelling, crying, hugging one another. We couldn’t believe it.”
Although officials said everyone directly involved in the rescue was Colombian, Brownfield said there was “close cooperation” from the Americans that included “exchange of intelligence” as well as “exchange of equipment, training advice and experiences of other operations.”
Santos said Cesar and another rebel on board would face justice.
The other rebel captors retreated into the jungle, he said, and the army let them escape “in hopes that they will free the rest of the hostages,” believed to number about 700.
At a Bogotá ceremony with top military commanders, the freed hostages walked up to a microphone one by one, identified themselves by name and rank, and thanked their rescuers. Some had been held for a dozen years, captured when rebels overran military outposts.
Last to speak was the French-Colombian Betancourt, who hugged her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, and her husband, Juan Carlos LeCompte. Breaking into tears, Betancourt appealed to the FARC to release the remaining hostages and make peace.
She thanked Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, against whom she was running when she was kidnapped, and said he “has been a very good president.”
However, she said, “I continue to aspire to serve Colombia as president.” For now, she added, “I’m just one more soldier.”
In Paris, her son Lorenzo Delloye-Betancourt called her release “the most beautiful news of my life.” He and other relatives were flying to Colombia to join her.
The Americans appeared healthy in a video shown on Colombian television, though U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield, who met with them at a provincial military base, said two of the three — he didn’t specify which — were suffering from the jungle malady leishmaniasis and “looking forward to modern medical treatment.”
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 in Miami.
And Howes’ niece in Massachusetts, Amanda Howes, said the rescue “redefines the word ‘miracle.’ ”
Betancourt, 46, was abducted in February 2002. The Americans were captured a year later when their drug surveillance plane went down in rebel-held jungle. In the five years since, their families had received only two “proof of life” videos, the latest in November.
