AS THE unmarked white helicopter descended into the jungle clearing, Ingrid Betancourt had no reason to believe that her six-year-long ordeal was nearly over.
Looking at the crew, some wearing Che Guevara T-shirts, the captive politician reasoned this was just going to be another day as a pawn in the struggle between her tormentors from the Revolutionary Army of Columbia, better known as the Farc guerrill
a group, and her country's government.
Along with 13 other hostages, her hands were bound with white plastic cuffs as she was shepherded towards the waiting aircraft. Angry and upset, she refused a coat they offered as they told her she was going to a colder climate. With the bizarre scene being captured on video an American hostage, Keith Stansell, annoyed at being restrained, leaned toward the camera and shouted an expletive before getting on board.
Behind them was Gerardo Aguila Ramirez, alias Cesar, the Farc local commander who apparently had been ordered by his high command to assemble three groups of hostages at the clearing as part of a prisoner swap. He had been in control of Betancourt's fate for four years.
Jumping on board the helicopter, which he believed was flying to a rendezvous with his guerrilla boss, he modestly refused to grant the video team an interview. What happened next will go down in annals of hostage rescue operations.
Not long after the group was airborne, Betancourt turned around and saw Cesar blindfolded and stripped naked on the floor. Then came the words she had been waiting so long to hear. "We're the national army," said one of the crewmen. "You're free."
The helicopter team, posing as a sympathetic rebel group and a TV crew, were Colombian commandos who had pulled off one of the most audacious rescue operations in history.
In the film, Betancourt, the former presidential candidate kidnapped in 2002, is seen joyfully hugging William Perez, an army corporal and fellow hostage she later credited for nursing her through her jungle illnesses. "We waited 10 years for you!" exclaims Perez, who was captured by Farc in 1998.
This weekend, 46-year-old Betancourt is back "breathing the air" of France, where she was brought up before emigrating to Columbia and entering national politics, and where she earned the nickname 'Colombia's Joan of Arc'. After her release on Wednesday and being reunited with her family, she was flown to Europe for a hero's welcome from President Nicolas Sarkozy. Her fellow hostages, including three American contractors, were also all back home – while Cesar is taking his turn in captivity, in a Bogota jail.
The stock of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe – who masterminded the operation to free Betancourt with help from the CIA – has risen and, amid the euphoria, the end of Farc is being forecast.
Yesterday, new details emerged of how the secret operation was carried out and of Betancourt's treatment at the hands of her captors. She survived for six years sleeping on mud floors, being infected by jungle parasites, chained by the neck and as yet undisclosed violent treatment.
Asked if she had been raped, she replied: "I have had painful experiences but I don't want to talk about this here, now at this time of happiness."
Wednesday's elaborate ruse intentionally mimicked two hostage handovers brokered by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez earlier this year, when Venezuelan helicopters carrying International Red Cross observers picked up six hostages.
But its success hinged entirely on a near-total breakdown in communications between the isolated guerrilla jailers and their commanders – the result of years of intense US-Colombian military co-operation that has seriously weakened Latin America's last major rebel army.
The rescue had its genesis in the escape last year of a Colombian who had spent time in captivity with the three Americans and Betancourt, but it began to gain steam only in January, when Colombian intelligence determined that the hostages were being moved.
The Colombians installed US remote-controlled, video monitoring devices – which can zoom in and out – along rivers that are the only transport route through dense jungles. American surveillance planes intercepted rebel radio and satellite phone conversations and employed foliage-penetrating imagery.
In mid-February, a Colombian patrol spotted the three Americans – Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes – bathing, under guard, in the Apoporis River, the first sight of them since their surveillance plane crashed in 2003.
For four days, they were kept under watch but a rescue operation was deemed too risky and was called off.
Then a stroke of luck. A disillusioned and disgruntled member of Farc agreed to spearhead the operation. Crucially, he was trusted by both the rebels' high command and the leader of the 1st Front, which had the hostages.
The turncoat managed to persuade Cesar that top commanders wanted 15 hostages – including the three Americans and Betancourt – moved to a rallying point. US spy satellites helped track them on a month-long journey that began on May 31.
On Tuesday, two Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters left a military base in an Andean mountain valley, settling down for a nervous night in a wilderness clearing.
Aboard the chopper that would recover the hostages were four air force crewmen in civilian disguise, seven military intelligence agents and the guerrilla turncoat. Two of the agents were dressed as rebels and the rest wore white, as if on a humanitarian mission. All had taken acting lessons to play their roles.
Shortly after midday on Wednesday, the helicopter touched down at the rendezvous point.
One of the agents, posing as a cameraman, recorded video as the guerrillas on the ground bound the hostages' hands on the crew's instructions. Tying up the hostages was part of the plan. Once aloft, it was Cesar and his aide who were overpowered instead.
There was a plan B. If Cesar had rumbled the ruse, 39 more helicopters and 2,000 troops were in position to encircle the hostage-holders and try to persuade them to give up peacefully. In the event, it was not necessary.
The turncoat is now free and will receive a sizeable amount from a $100m government reward fund.
For Farc, the rescue could not have come at a worse time. The rebels were already in disarray after losing three senior commanders in March – one killed by government bombs, a second by a turncoat bodyguard and the third, co-founder Manuel Marulanda, succumbing to a heart attack at age 78.
"Even before the rescue operation – but especially afterwards – there is every indication that the war is, for all intents and purposes, over," said Michael Shifter, of The Inter-American Dialogue, a non-partisan Washington think tank.
The Colombian military says Farc has maintained complete radio silence since Wednesday's rescue. Its two most senior leaders, Monoy Jojoy and Alfonso Cano, are hunkered down in jungle hideouts and not communicating.
Betancourt now plans to spend time with her son Lorenzo, 19, and daughter Melanie, 22, before deciding on her future.
Abducted while campaigning for the presidency in a remote rural area, she has not ruled out returning to Colombian politics.
But first she has to get over her long and brutal ordeal, during which she often thought of suicide while chained to a tree. "Death is a hostage's most faithful companion," she said
The full article contains 1220 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
