Former hostage Ingrid Betancourt embraces her son Lorenzo, right, and daughter Mélanie in Bogota on Thursday. (Ricardo Mazalan/Associated Press)Rescued hostage Ingrid Betancourt was to get a hero's welcome upon return home to France on Friday after being held captive for six years in the Colombian jungle.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was to personally greet Betancourt's plane at its landing at about 10 a.m. ET at the Villacoublay military base, outside Paris. Betancourt and her family were then to be brought to the lavish Élysée Palace, the official presidential residence in the heart of the city.
Pope Benedict XVI also expressed interest Friday in meeting with Betancourt as soon as possible. He sent a telegram to Betancourt expressing his happiness for her release, according to the Vatican.
Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen, was running president of Colombia when she was captured by insurgents in 2002. She and 14 other hostages were rescued Wednesday by a group of Colombian military agents who posed as members of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials, FARC.
Betancourt, who grew up in Paris, became a cause célèbre in France during her captivity. Her portrait hung in town hall buildings, while her supporters often rallied in the streets, calling for her release. When Sarkozy was elected a year ago, he vowed to make Betancourt's freedom a priority.
In chains for 3 years
On Thursday, Betancourt's two children flew to Bogota for an emotional reunion with their mother, all three of them crying as they hugged each other for the first time in six years. Mélanie, 22, and Lorenzo, 19, were cared for by their father, Betancourt's ex-husband, during the years their mother was away.
Betancourt, who remarried, said she endured humiliating treatment at the hands of her captors, who at one time made her wear chains 24 hours a day for three years.
"When you have a chain around your neck, you have to keep your head down and try to accept your fate without succumbing entirely to humiliation, without forgetting who you are," Betancourt, 46, told Europe-1 radio.
"I reached a moment where I understood that death was a possibility," she said in another interview with France-2 television. "I had seen my companions die. I knew that death arrives very, very quickly in the jungle."
Betancourt said she battled illness in captivity and couldn't properly nourish herself. She lost weight and at times had difficulty swallowing and moving. Her only relief came from a male nurse, who helped her get access to medicine.
Sarkozy can't be credited for release: opponent
Sarkozy's opponents have attacked him for having little to do with Betancourt's freedom. Sarkozy, who had sent a medical team to Colombia in an unsuccessful attempt to get Betancourt treatment, had been pushing for negotiations with FARC, not a military operation.
Sarkozy's closest aide, Élysée chief of staff Claude Gueant, admitted Thursday that France learned of Betancourt's release only 15 minutes before Colombian media broke the news.
"Everyone knows it: it's a Colombian operation that was well-executed, that worked well, that proves that the negotiations with the FARC were useless," former Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal told LCI television.
"Nicolas Sarkozy had absolutely nothing to do with this liberation."
FARC, which still holds an estimated 700 hostages, was established in the 1960s as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party. The militant group later became involved in the cocaine trade as a means of raising funds.
The Colombian government estimates the group has between 6,000 and 8,000 armed members and a military presence in 15 to 20 per cent of the country, particularly remote jungle and mountain areas.
Some estimates put the number of FARC fighters at as many as 18,000. The governments of Canada, the United States and the European Union all consider the organization a terrorist group.
