Betancourt Home at Last

CHEN: After six years in captivity, former Colombian senator and presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was reunited with her children in a tearful, joyous reunion. It comes after yesterday's dramatic rescue orchestrated between the U.S. and Colombian governments. Here's more. STORY: Ingrid Betancourt, the symbol of rebel hostages in Colombia, hugged and wept with her children yesterday for the first time in six years. [Ingrid Betancourt, Rescued Hostage]: "I want to share with all of you this infinite luck to have my children next to me after seven years of not seeing them. I imagine this feels like nirvana, paradise." 46 year-old Betancourt says her captivity in secret camps, sometimes chained by the neck and desperate for medicine to relieve jungle illnesses, had driven her to think of suicide. Her son and daughter, Lorenzo and Melanie, flew from Paris with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner as soon as they got news of their mother's rescue from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). [Melanie Delloye, Betancourt's Daughter]: "I think these are the strongest and the most beautiful moments of our lives, for me and my brother, truly to have our beautiful mother here with us." Colombia says the rescue mission hinged on soldiers posing as members of a fictitious group apparently sympathetic to the rebels. Once the aircraft was in the air, the soldiers disarmed two guerrillas and informed the hostages that they were free. The three U.S. hostages - Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes - were greeted by the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, before going home to their families. The bloodless rescue operation increases public confidence in Uribe, whose own father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping two decades ago. The outlawed rebel army, once a 17,000-member force able to frequently attack major cities, has been driven back by Uribe into remote areas and now has about 9,000 combatants. The FARC, considered a terrorist organization by U.S. and European officials, still holds hundreds of other hostages.

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YouTube | July 5, 2008

Tags:. .mothers. .camps. .armed. .increases. .strongest