The estranged second husband of Ingrid Betancourt has filed court papers seeking half her fortune just as the world’s most celebrated ex-hostage launches a memoir about her six years in jungle captivity.
The lawyer for Juan Carlos Lecompte said on Tuesday that he filed a motion a day earlier in Bogota family court seeking to freeze all of Betancourt’s assets — in Colombia and abroad.
Lawyer Heli Abel Torrado said the assets include an apartment in Paris, a home in Wyoming and royalties from her memoir. The book, titled Even Silence Has An End, went on sale internationally on Tuesday.
Neither Betancourt nor her lawyer could immediately be reached for comment. The lawyer’s secretary said he was traveling and a phone message left with Betancourt’s agent in New York was not returned.
Lecompte said Betancourt, 48, filed for divorce several months after the Colombian government rescued her in July 2008.
Her memoir has already raised the ire of one of her former fellow captives, Clara Rojas, who decried as “infamy” Betancourt’s suggestion in it that Rojas asked their leftist rebel captives for permission to get pregnant.
Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national, was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in February 2002 while campaigning for president.
Betancourt has two grown children from her first marriage and now divides her time between Paris and New York.
She alienated many Colombians in July when they learned she had decided to seek more than US$6 million in damages from the state.
Betancourt later withdrew the petition for damages.
Some prominent Colombians accused her of being reckless by heading by road into the conflict zone where she was kidnapped.
Betancourt contends the government bears responsibility because it denied her helicopter transport, stripped her of armed protection and did not insist she not attempt the journey.
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