Smash hit

Ms Betancourt, 46, who is French-Colombian and a former presidential candidate, was seized by Farc guerillas on February 23, 2002, while campaigning in a remote and dangerous area controlled by the rebels. She was captured along with her running-mate, Clara Rojas, who was freed in January.

The three US Defence Department employees — Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell — were seized after their aircraft crashed while on a drug eradication mission in 2003.

Mr Santos said that intelligence officers had infiltrated Farc’s command structure and ordered the hostages to be taken by helicopter to meet Alfonso Cano, the rebels’ new military commander. “This was an unprecedented operation. It will go down in history for its audaciousness and effectiveness. The helicopters, which in fact were from the army, picked up the hostages in Guaviare and flew them to freedom.”

Last night Ms Betancourt described how she and the other hostages had been handcuffed and loaded on to the helicopter, expecting to be moved to a different rebel camp. Once they were in the air, “something happened, I’m not quite sure what”, she said, and her captors were on the floor. “A soldier said: ‘We are the Colombian National Army. You are free.’ The helicopter nearly fell out of the sky with all the celebrations.”

France did not play a role in the operation, learning of it just 15 minutes before it took place, Claude Gueant, aide to President Sarkozy, said today.

Mr Sarkozy, who took over negotiations to secure her release from his predecessor Jacques Chirac, spoke of his nation's "immense joy" at her rescue. "All of France is happy,” he said. “I would like to say to Ingrid ... that we are proud of your courage, that we are happy for you,” he added.

Ms Betancourt, who is to fly to Paris tomorrow, said earlier that she believed it was the efforts of France which had kept her alive. “I want to tell President Sarkozy - and through him all the French people - that they were our support, our light,” she told Colombian television this morning. “It’s time for me to thank the French, to tell them I admire them, that I feel proud to be French as well.”

Vowing to work for reconciliation in Colombia, she said she was unsure whether she would re-enter politics and would discuss the matter with her family first.

Ms Betancourt is from a wealthy international background and was once profiled in Vanity Fair. She has long campaigned against drugs and corruption in Colombia, and until her capture, she had run a punchy and irreverent presidential campaign laced with humour. She handed out free Viagra samples with a promise to invigorate Colombians in their fight against graft.

She topped the bestseller lists in France with her autobiography, Storm in My Heart, and was to some reviewers a modern-day Joan of Arc.

But six years of captivity took a terrible toll on her. In an early video released by her captors, she appeared feisty and called on Colombian security forces to rescue her. The last time Ms Betancourt was seen in a video in 2007, she was shown sitting on a chair, staring blankly at the ground. Her face was gaunt and her hair had grown past her waist.

A letter to her mother, captured along with the video by security forces, was a testament to her increasingly despondent state of mind. “I feel like my children’s life is on standby, waiting for me to be free, and their daily suffering makes death seem like a sweet option,” she wrote.

Yesterday’s raid is a coup for President Uribe, who has made fighting the rebel movement, the drug trade and cutting crime his priorities. Today jubilant street celebrations broke out in towns and cities across the country, while the Colombian peso rose 1.7 per cent today amid renewed political confidence.

Farc guerrillas have been holding about 40 prominent hostages in the jungle, hoping to negotiate the release of about 500 of the group’s jailed fighters. The rebels, Latin America’s oldest insurgency, have financed their operations through hostage-taking and cocaine-running.

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