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Footage of Ingrid Betancourt's rescue

The Colombian government has released video footage of the daring raid that freed 15 rebel-held hostages, including politician Ingrid Betancourt.

The video shows the captives' joyous reaction when they are told they are not being moved to another rebel camp, but have been rescued by the army.

Officials denied reports payments were made to free the hostages, but said Colombia did reward information.

The French-Colombian Ms Betancourt has received a rapturous welcome in France.

The politician grew up and was educated in France. President Nicolas Sarkozy headed a campaign to try to secure her release.

Disbelief and jubilation

Colombian soldiers posed as members of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) and filmed the operation.

INGRID BETANCOURT

Born on 25 December 1961
Grows up in Paris
1989: Returns to Colombia
1994: Elected to lower house
1998: Becomes a senator
2002: Kidnapped by Farc rebels



In pictures: France hails Betancourt
How the hostages were freed
Readers' views: Colombia's future

The group of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) rebels holding Ms Betancourt, three American contractors and 11 Colombian police had been convinced by an infiltrator to move the captives and hand them over to the false NGO to be moved by helicopter to another Farc camp.

The hostages are seen wearing plastic handcuffs and looking dismal as they are led on to the helicopter.

With them are the local Farc commander and another rebel.

More Farc guerrillas can be seen standing in the distance.

There is a jump in the video as the soldiers working the camera stopped filming for several minutes to help capture the two Farc members on the helicopter.

Then, disbelief and jubilation are plain to see on Ms Betancourt's and the other hostages' faces as the Colombian soldiers tell them they have just been rescued.

The whole operation unfolds in just minutes.

'100% Colombian'

Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos denied reports that $20m had been paid to some Farc members to assist the operation.
He said no money had changed hands to complete the operation but that $20m would have been a bargain as $100m had been offered in the past.

CAPTIVITY TIMELINE
Feb, 2002: Betancourt kidnapped by Farc rebels
Feb, 2003: US defence contractors Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves seized by after their plane goes down in southern Colombia
Jan, 2008: Betancourt aide Clara Rojas and ex-congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez freed by Farc
March, 2008: Colombian forces raid rebel camp in Ecuador and kill Farc commander Raul Reyes
March, 2008: Farc leader Manuel Marulanda dies of reported heart attack
July, 2008: Colombian military frees Ms Betancourt, the three US contractors and 11 other hostages



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He said, however, that there was an ongoing policy of paying for information regarding Farc.
"We have a very aggressive and successful policy of offering awards," he said at a news conference in Bogota to display the rescue video.
"We pay for information and we have paid millions of dollars to many people for information of all different kinds. If we had paid on this occasion we would have been the first to admit it because it is part of our politics."

He also denied reports that Israeli and US agents had been involved in the operation, saying it had been "100% Colombian".

US President George W Bush had been informed of the raid 10 days in advance and assured that the risks were minimal.

Mr Santos said the Colombian soldiers who rescued the hostages had carried no weapons.

They were trained for weeks by actors. One posed as an Italian, another as an Australian who Colombian officials said looked and acted like "Crocodile Dundee".

Mr Santos said the mission intentionally mimicked two hostage handovers brokered by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

'Tears of joy'

Since the raid, Ms Betancourt has been reunited with her family and travelled to France, where she has received a lavish welcome, including a meeting with President Sarkozy in the Elysee Palace.

"I have cried a great deal during this time from pain and indignation, today I am crying because of joy," she said.




Ingrid Betancourt was greeted by President Sarkozy

On Saturday Ms Betancourt will have a number of medical tests in Paris. Although she said she was in "great shape" she suffered a number of illnesses in captivity.

Mr Sarkozy said her release had given the world "a message of hope".
He led a campaign to try to secure her release, including sending a team of medics to Colombia in an unsuccessful attempt to get her treatment.

Ms Betancourt was campaigning for the presidency against current incumbent Alvaro Uribe when she was kidnapped by Farc guerrillas six years ago.

After her release she thanked Mr Uribe and said she still aspired "to serve Colombia as president".

Mr Uribe was first elected president in 2002. He has pursued a hardline stance against Colombia's left-wing guerrilla groups while making tentative peace overtures.

The Farc, which has been waging a guerrilla war to establish a Marxist government for the past four decades, still holds as many as 700 hostages.

They have suffered a series of blows in recent months, including the deaths of several senior leaders.

With the rescue of Ms Betancourt and 14 other high-profile hostages, they have now lost some of their key bargaining chips.


Colombian commandos disguised as rebels spirited 15 hostages to freedom on Wednesday, including Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician held for six years, and three American military contractors, according to the hostages and the Colombian authorities.

Ms. Betancourt, speaking just hours after her rescue, described the operation as "perfect." Talking to Colombian radio and later at a news conference in Bogotá, she said helicopters of what had seemed to be rebels had landed around dawn in jungle area where the hostages were being held.

It had appeared to be just another change of location, she said, and she was handcuffed and "humiliated" before being put on board the helicopters.

But after takeoff, she said, the crew told their passengers they were free.

"Thank you for your impeccable operation," she told top military commanders in Bogotá, after a joyful reunion with her mother.

The United States was involved in the planning of the operation and provided ''specific support," according to the White House. But officials would not describe the nature of that support, or say whether it included military help or intelligence assistance.

The Colombian government said the three Americans — Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes — were en route to the United States on Wednesday evening, news agencies reported. In France, where Ms. Betancourt has been a symbol of suffering, courage and endurance, television stations broke into programming to run specials on the release, and President Nicolas Sarkozy made a televised appearance with members of her family. The Colombian authorities said the 11 other hostages were Colombian soldiers and police officers.

The rescue of the captives, who were reported to be in good health, marks a major victory in Colombia's long struggle with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a Marxist-inspired insurgency that has been attempting to topple the Colombian government for more than four decades.

The defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, said the rescue operation was carried out Wednesday in Guaviare, a jungle region in south-central Colombia. It comes after the killing and capture in recent months of several senior commanders of the FARC.
Late Wednesday night, he appeared on live television with Ms. Betancourt's children and her sister, and said France would fly them to Colombia, accompanied by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

The FARC captured Ms. Betancourt while she was campaigning in Colombia's interior in 2002. The three Americans were taken captive in 2003 after their surveillance plane went down on an antinarcotics mission for the United States Defense Department. Officials in Washington also said that the Colombians came close to mounting a similar rescue mission about four months ago, but what one official called "a window of opportunity" closed before the Colombia security forces could carry out a rescue.

Colombian officials announced in June that the American contractors had been spotted by troops in the jungle a few months earlier, but said it had been impossible to try a rescue at the time.

Had the Colombians tried a rescue mission in that period, there might have been direct American involvement, American officials said Wednesday. "We had assets postured to help more directly about four months ago," one American official said. "We had more assets postured then that we did not. This one was planned, led and executed by the Colombians."

In January, in a deal brokered by the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, freed Clara Rojas, 44, who was captured along with Ms. Betancourt, and Consuelo González de Perdomo, 57, a former Colombian lawmaker abducted in 2001.

Ms. Rojas bore a child during captivity, who was found to be living in foster care in Bogotá shortly before her release, and not with the guerrillas, as they had indicated.

In his television appearance, Mr. Sarkozy also made an appeal for the release of another dual citizen of France, the Franco-Israeli Gilad Shalit, who was taken hostage by Hamas in a raid into Israel two years ago and whose release has been the subject of long and frustrating negotiations between Israel, Egypt and Hamas.

Ms. Betancourt's plight gained new urgency in February when a former hostage warned that she was very sick and depressed, prompting tearful appeals for her release from her two children and her mother. Mr. Sarkozy made efforts to secure her release, and even sent a airplane with doctors to wait for her, but then in vain.

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