Colombia’s military has shown for the first time a video detailing a daring rescue operation that set free 15 rebel-held hostages, including former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.
The images, unveiled on Friday, showed the captives angry and resigned at having their hands bound, and then minutes later sobbing with jubilation aboard a helicopter upon discovering they had been freed.
The video of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels benignly handing over 15 hostages to disguised Colombian commandos was released to counter questions about the military’s dramatic and bloodless coup, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said.
“This is absolutely false,” Santos told reporters, when asked about reports that US$20 million dollars had been paid as ransom and that it was all arranged in advance with a rebel in charge of the hostages.
The 15 hostages, including French-Colombian Betancourt and three US defense contractors, were rescued on Wednesday after Colombian soldiers disguised as rebels arrived at a jungle hideout of the FARC and tricked the guerrillas into handing them over, ostensibly to be transferred to another rebel site.
The video shows a small team of unarmed, disguised Colombian commandos landing in a field of coca bushes in Guaviare department in southeast Colombia, where they were met by a group of FARC rebels, mostly women, escorting the 15 hostages.
It then shows them binding the hands of the hostages with plastic cuffs.
One hostage, a Colombian soldier, believing the cameraman was a real journalist, angrily complained about his 10 years in captivity.
Once aboard the disguised military helicopter, the video showed Betancourt and others reacting in surprise and breaking out in tears after the cuffs were removed and the soldiers revealed themselves.
Earlier on Friday the Swiss radio station Radio Suisse Romande reported that the bloodless release of the captives was obtained by paying US$20 million to the FARC.
The hostages “were in reality ransomed for a high price, and the whole operation afterwards was a set-up,” the radio’s French-language channel said.
In Colombia, reports said that, far from being a ruse, the handover was prearranged with a payoff through the lover of a turncoat FARC leader.
Colombian Army chief General Mario Montoya denied in the press conference that any money was paid in the rescue.
“We have not paid one single cent, much less US$20 million. That would have been cheap,” he said, according to a CNN translation.
“Because we had offered US$100 million. If they would have just handed over the hostages, there wouldn’t have been any mission,” he said.
Santos and Montoya said the video was taken by a Colombian soldier posing as a journalist accompanying the supposed transfer operation.
They said he was there to distract FARC leaders on the ground by interviewing them.
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