Law of the Jungle by John Otis

Author:John Otis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

“IT’S EASY TO CRY OVER SPILLED milk,” Clara Rojas later wrote. “But if the president’s attitude had been different on that day, we very probably would not have been kidnapped.”

Betancourt’s family also blamed President Pastrana and claimed that his government wasn’t lifting a finger to free her. Yet if there was one prisoner who would not be forgotten it was Íngrid Betancourt. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the U.S. State Department, and members of the European Parliament all denounced her abduction. Then there was France, the Betancourt family’s deep and loyal ally across the pond.

Because Betancourt had been married to a French diplomat, she had dual citizenship. One of Betancourt’s former university professors was Dominique de Villepin, who served as President Jacques Chirac’s prime minister and foreign affairs guru. As he looked into the kidnapping, Daniel Parfait, the French ambassador to Bogotá, became so enamored of Betancourt’s older sister, Astrid, that he left his wife for her.

Thus while the U.S. government tried to minimize the perceived value of the American hostages, officials at the Élysée Palace declared that freedom for Betancourt was a national cause. And from day one, French officials put enormous pressure on President Pastrana—and Álvaro Uribe who was sworn in a few months later—to give in to the FARC’s demands for a prisoner exchange.

“They were telling us to do deals we weren’t willing to do,” said Vice President Francisco Santos. “But in turning Íngrid into this important international figure, it just upped the price for her release.”

About a year after Betancourt was kidnapped, an informant told Colombian officials that a FARC envoy would be willing to speak with members of the Betancourt family. Astrid Betancourt spent several days in the jungle along the Colombian-Brazilian border, then contacted the French foreign minister with an urgent request. She apparently told Dominique de Villepin that the FARC planned to release her sister, who required immediate medical assistance. Without informing the Colombian and Brazilian governments, the French dispatched a C-130 Hercules transport plane with a posse of undercover agents to the Amazon city of Manaus. From there, French agents chartered a seaplane and flew farther into the jungle all the while trying to make contact with the FARC. But the operation collapsed when the spies were arrested by the Brazilian police, creating an embarrassing scandal for the French government with its allies in Bogotá and Brasilia.

The French never explained what had made them believe the FARC was suddenly going to hand over Betancourt. But much later, a series of e-mail messages on a computer confiscated from a FARC camp suggested that the mission failed due to a botched ransom payment. In one message, FARC spokesman Raúl Reyes appeared to scold a French mediator—whom Colombian officials had authorized to make contact with the FARC—for turning over a large sum of cash to scam artists impersonating the guerrillas.

By then, France’s Colombia policy had become an Íngrid Betancourt policy. Jacques Thomet, a French journalist who wrote a book about the Chirac government’s obsession with Betancourt,

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