`Che' Shirts, Fake Rebels, Acting Class Helped Free BetancourtBloomberg LP - click above to access article direct or click on Bloomberg's link and go to the Latin America section. Experts copy and pasted below.
By Helen Murphy
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- The T-shirts with images of Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara convinced Ingrid Betancourt. She assumed the men with the iconic revolutionary on their chests were ushering her into the helicopter for transfer to yet another rebel camp.
Instead, Betancourt, along with 14 other hostages, was taking her first steps toward freedom after six years of captivity at the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Less than 24 hours later, she would be reunited with the two children she hadn't seen since her capture.
The white helicopter Betancourt climbed into was piloted by Colombian troops, and the six men wearing Che shirts were soldiers who tricked the rebels into following ``orders'' to move the prisoners. Colombian intelligence had infiltrated the group, known as the FARC, and started planning the rescue mission as long as a year ago.
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The day of her release, Betancourt awoke as usual at 4 a.m. to listen to a radio program that broadcasts news and messages from family members to the FARC's more than 700 captives. She and her fellow hostages were told by their guards an international aid helicopter would come and take them to the encampment of Alfonso Cano, the drug-funded group's leader.
`Surreal'
``The helicopters arrived, and these absolutely surreal characters came out,'' said Betancourt, gripping rosary beads after she landed at Bogota's military airport. ``They were wearing Che Guevara shirts and I thought, it's the FARC.''
The captives were handcuffed and manhandled onto the aircraft by the undercover agents. ``It was very humiliating,'' she said.
After the unmarked helicopter flew over the jungle and out of range of the FARC camp, the hostages saw the men in Che T- shirts spring on their captor. Gerardo Antonio Aguilar Ramirez, known by his alias as Cesar, was tied up, stripped and blindfolded. Then the Colombian troops revealed their identity.
``We are the national army, you are free!'' the agents told them. ``The helicopter almost fell out of the sky because we jumped and screamed, we hugged and cried,'' Betancourt said.
`Movie-Style'
Colombian intelligence officials were able to plan the rescue, code-named Operation Check for the end-game chess move, with information from John Frank Pinchao, a police official who escaped in April last year and helped pinpoint the FARC camps. ``This was a movie-style rescue that freed 15 people who had been tortured for so many years,'' Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told reporters.
A sustained barrage of air and ground attacks on the FARC has weakened the group, and local commanders have largely lost contact with the senior leadership, ex-guerrillas say.
The military placed covert operatives inside the camp holding Betancourt about six months ago. They started to gain the trust of the commander Cesar, according to General Freddy Padilla, chief of the armed forces.
With help from a FARC leader who hasn't been identified, the military was able to con Cesar into thinking he'd been given the mission of transporting three groups of prisoners to Cano, who replaced the FARC's founder Manuel Marulanda in May after his death of a heart attack. Those who arrived in the helicopter were given acting lessons to pretend to be aid agency personnel, said General Mario Montoya, the army's top officer.
``I never expected to get out alive,'' said Betancourt, who thanked the military for its ``impeccable'' mission.
Plan B
The military had a Plan B. Some 30 helicopters and 58 men surrounded the camp, ready to strike or offer payments to the captors if the covert plan failed, Padilla said.
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``In all these years, I thought that as long as I was alive, as long as I continued to breathe, I must continue to hope,'' she said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Helen Murphy in Bogota at hmurphy1@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: July 4, 2008 00:01 EDT
