Watch Out

After the false orders, the captors took their hostages to a rallying point in eastern Colombia.

“The helicopter was on the ground for 22 minutes,” said a clearly relieved army chief, General Mario Montoya — “the longest minutes of my life”.

During that time the military spies persuaded “César”, the rebel commander charged with guarding the hostages, to board the white unmarked MI17 helicopter with one of his top lieutenants. All believed that they were on their way to meet the new Farc leader. “In fact,” Mr Santos said, “the helicopter was from the Army and had highly trained intelligence personnel as crew.”

Watching the odd scene unfold, the hostages were unsure what to think.

“The helicopters arrived and these completely surreal characters came out,” Ms Betancourt said. “I looked at this and thought, ‘Who are these people?’ ”

Her early optimism vanished when she saw that some of the men were wearing Che Guevara T-shirts, and they forced her to wear handcuffs on the flight. A rebel commander also told her that they were simply being moved to a different prison camp. “I thought, ‘This is just the Farc. This is not a health brigade, it’s nothing’. We were very annoyed, indignant and humiliated’.”

Almost as soon as the helicopter doors slammed shut, things began to change.

“The helicopter began to rise. Suddenly, something happened, I didn’t notice quite what. All of a sudden, I saw the commander who had been in charge of us for so many years — who so often humiliated us and was such a despot — naked and handcuffed on the floor.”

Then the hostages heard the unforgettable words: “We are the National Army. You are free.” Ms Betancourt said: “The helicopter almost fell out of the sky because we jumped, shouted, wept and embraced each other.”

The Colombian authorities were jubilant about the operation, hailing it as “unprecedented in its audaciousness and effectiveness”.

“There was no combat,” Fabio Valencia, the Interior Minister, said. “It was an impeccable military strategy.” The Colombian military had a back-up plan. Another 39 helicopters were on stand-by, Mr Santos said, prepared to encircle the rebels and hostages if the rescue failed.

The Colombian forces said that they allowed the rebels on the ground to escape as a goodwill gesture, in the hope that they would not retaliate against other hostages.

President Uribe said that he had also ordered troops not to kill the Farc rebels left on the ground so that “they understand that our security policy is not an end in itself, but a road to peace”.

The Colombian Government believes that Farc is holding at least 700 hostages as part of its campaign against the State. Yesterday the rebels released a Norwegian hostage, Alf Onshuus Niño, 31, a move thought to be unrelated to the release of Ms Betancourt. A ransom was reportedly paid.

The US welcomed the operation. President Bush and both presidential candidates congratulated Mr Uribe, who has a reputation for toughness and has received billions of dollars in US aid to fight Farc and the cocaine trade. The Republican candidate, John McCain, said Mr Uribe had told him in advance of the rescue plans while he was campaigning in Colombia.

Security experts hailed the operation. “It sounds absolutely brilliant,” said Alastair Morrison, a former SAS officer who led a successful raid in 1977 to rescue 91 hostages aboard a Lufthansa flight in Mogadishu.

“You’re always looking for ways to get surprise in these things, and obviously that’s exactly what they achieved. I must say, 22 minutes is an extraordinarily long time to have been on the ground. The \ nails must have been strained to breaking point, because they were surrounded by heavily armed people.”

Ms Betancourt was seized with her running-mate on February 23, 2002 while campaigning in a remote area near a rebel-controlled zone. On her first night of freedom she stayed up late talking to her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte. “We arrived at the house very late at night and got engrossed in a long conversation,” Mr Lecompte said.

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