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Former guerrilla regrets kidnapping Betancourt

Nolberto Uni, a former Colombian guerrilla, speaks to the press in a prison at Combita, Colombia, on Tuesday. PHOTO: AP

More than six years later, Nolberto Uni remembers clearly the day when he kidnapped Ingrid Betancourt.

It was Feb. 23, 2002, and the former presidential candidate was traveling in a jeep while on the campaign trail. Uni, then with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was manning a checkpoint on a lonely country road.

“The order was to detain all politicians of national stature,” Uni said on Tuesday in the prison he calls home today.

That Betancourt, one of Colombia’s best-known political figures, passed by “was a coincidence.”

As the world focuses on the plight of the French-Colombian politician who is said to be ill with malaria, depression and a host of other maladies, Uni said he regrets his role in her abduction.

“I do feel remorse,” Uni said. “The family — her mother, her children, her husband — a lot of people are suffering.”

That remorse led him to pen a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in which he apologizes and details the reasons for his decision to abandon the FARC in 2003, at great risk to his life.

The rebels are holding Betancourt and about three dozen other high-profile hostages that include three US defense contractors. For their release, the FARC wants a temporary demilitarized zone and freedom for hundreds of jailed rebels.

Betancourt’s plight has become a cause celebre in France. Earlier this month, Sarkozy launched a humanitarian mission to treat or rescue her after receiving reports that she was in grave health.

But the delegation turned back after FARC leaders said they would not unilaterally release hostages and would only exchange Betancourt and other captives for rebels imprisoned in Colombia and the US.

In Paris on Tuesday, Betancourt’s sister Astrid said that to her knowledge there is no basis for reports that her captive sibling has hepatitis B and is near death.

“What is crystal clear for me is that my sister is weak,” Astrid Betancourt said. “But that doesn’t mean that she is so ill she’s on the brink of death.”

Back in 2002, Ingrid Betancourt at first thought the uniform-clad guerrillas who stopped her vehicle were soldiers, Uni said.

After radioing his commander to report the capture of Ingrid Betancourt and her assistant Clara Rojas, he told the politician she was being detained.

“Her face changed color,” the 36-year old Uni said. “She didn’t say anything to me.”

His bloc of the FARC held Ingrid Betancourt and Rojas for another eight or nine months.

Uni eventually grew tired of life with FARC, feeling they had abandoned their ideological roots and were becoming too bound up by rules.

“You could face a trial for drinking two beers, for impregnating your partner,” he said.

So he fled in 2003 along with six other guerrillas.

“If you desert, you are shot,” Uni said. “The FARC are your enemies not just for one or two years, but for life.”

He thinks the FARC executed his brother in retaliation.

Uni handed himself over to Colombian authorities, but he hid his involvement in the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt and Rojas, who was released by the FARC earlier this year. A fellow guerrilla snitched on him, and he was quickly convicted for the crimes.

Today Uni, too, is serving a 34-year sentence in a maximum-security prison in the central town of Combita.

Uni doesn’t have high hopes for the prospects of an exchange — long stalled by both sides’ refusal to give much ground — that could lead to Ingrid Betancourt’s freedom.

“It looks very difficult to me,” he said.
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