Ingrid Betancourt – power is freedom and how every minute counts in life

Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio (born December 25, 1961)^[1] is a Colombian-French politician, former senator and anti-corruption activist. Betancourt was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on February 23, 2002, and rescued from captivity six and a half years later in Operation Jaque, along with 14 other hostages (three Americans and 11 Colombian policemen and soldiers), by Colombian security forces on July 2, 2008, who claim to have tricked the FARC into believing they were a leftist non-governmental organization.^[2][3] In all, she was held captive for 2,321 days after being taken while campaigning for the Colombian presidency as a Green. She had decided to campaign in an area of high guerrilla presence in spite of warnings from the government, police and military not to do so. While her kidnapping received media coverage worldwide this was particularly so in France due to her dual French citizenship. She has received multiple international awards, like the Légion d’honneur and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008 she received the Concord Prince of Asturias Award

Betancourt was born in Bogotá, Colombia, South America. Her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, is a former Miss Colombia who later served in Congress^[1] representing poor southern neighborhoods of Bogotá. Her father, Gabriel Betancourt, was minister for the General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla dictatorship (1953-1957), the assistant director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, then ambassador of Colombia to UNESCO in Paris,^[5] and head of the education commission of the Alliance for Progress in Washington, D.C. under John F. Kennedy. The Betancourt family is one of Colombia’s oldest aristocratic families, descended from French Norman immigrants who arrived from Grainville-la-Teinturière three centuries before.

After attending private school in France, a boarding school in England as well as the Liceo Francés in Bogotá,^[5] she attended the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (commonly known as Sciences Po).^[6]

After graduating, she married fellow student Fabrice Delloye in 1983,^[7] and they had two children, Mélanie (born 1985) and Lorenzo (born 1988). Through this marriage she became a French citizen.^[1] Her husband served in the French diplomatic corps, and the couple lived in multiple countries, including New Zealand and the Seychelles. During the 1980s, she briefly lived in Quito, Ecuador, where she worked as a fitness instructor.

In the mid 1990s, Betancourt and Delloye divorced, and she married Colombian advertising executive, Juan Carlos Lecompte in 1997. After her 2008 release, Lecompte said their marriage may be over. ^[8]

Her children Melanie and Lorenzo moved to New Zealand to live with their father due to death threats stemming from her political activities.^[9] They were 16 and 13 when she was kidnapped in 2002.

On July 2, 2008, Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos called a press conference to announce the rescue of Betancourt and 14 other captives. The operation that won their release, codenamed “Jaque” (Spanish for “check” as in checkmate), included members of the Colombian military intelligence who infiltrated local FARC squads and the secretariat of FARC, according to Santos. The rebels in charge of the hostages were duped into accepting a faked request from headquarters to gather the hostages together, supposedly to be flown to guerrilla commander Alfonso Cano. Instead, they were flown by government personnel dressed as FARC to San José del Guaviare. No one was harmed during the rescue. Three American Northrop Grumman contractors, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes, were among those released.^[36]

Military agents spent months planting themselves within FARC, gaining the rebels’ trust, and joining the rebels’ leadership council. Other agents were assigned to guard the hostages. Using their authority in the group, the agents ordered the captives moved from three different locations to a central area. From this point, the hostages, agents, and about 60 real rebels made a 90-mile march through the jungle to a spot where, agents told their unsuspecting comrades, an “international mission” was coming to check on the hostages. On schedule, an unmarked white helicopter set down and Colombian security forces posing as FARC rebels jumped out. They told the rebels that they would take the hostages to the meeting with the “international mission.” All of the captives were handcuffed and placed aboard the helicopter, along with two of their FARC guards, who were quickly disarmed and subdued after the helicopter lifted off. According to Betancourt, a crew member then turned and told the 15 hostages, “We are the national military. You are free.”^[37]Israeli tracking technology was used by the rescuers to zero in on their target. ^[36]

On July 16, 2008 it became public that one of the Colombian officials was misusing a Red Cross emblem during the rescue operation

President Uribe stated that the rescue operation “was guided in every way by the light of the Holy Spirit, the protection of our Lord and the Virgin Mary.” ^[42] The hostages indicated that they had spent much time in captivity praying the rosary, and Ms. Betancourt, formerly a lapsed Catholic who prayed daily on a wooden rosary which she made while a hostage^[43], attributed the rescue as follows: “I am convinced this is a miracle of the Virgin Mary. To me it is clear she has had a hand in all of this.”^[42]

On July 21, 2008, Ms. Betancourt and her family made a pilgrimage to Lourdes to give thanks and to pray for her captors and those who remained hostage.^[44]

In August of 2008, Betancourt and her family were received by His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI in a private 20-minute audience.

Two days after her rescue, six years after being captured by guerrillas in the Colombian jungle, Ingrid Betancourt arrived in Paris on Friday to greet a joyful nation that had adopted her as one of its own, campaigning for her freedom and moved by her reunion with her children, now grown.

“I owe everything to France,” she said at an emotional welcoming ceremony at a military air base outside Paris. “France is my home. You are my family.”

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who greeted her at the airport, said: “Dear Ingrid, we have been waiting for this so long. All of France is welcoming you back today.”

He called her bloodless rescue “a message of hope today for all those who believe in freedom.”

Sarkozy was accompanied by his wife, Carla, senior officials and members of the support group that had campaigned for Betancourt’s release. The French president was meeting a plane that he had sent to Colombia with her children to greet her and bring her back. It was wonderful publicity, with live coverage on television, allowing Sarkozy to bask in the good feelings created by the release, which he had made a priority of his government.

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