[R-G] The FARC had Already Expressed to European Delegations Their Willingness to Liberate the Hostages

[Anthony Fenton]

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/someone-get-this-woman-a-newspaper/

Ingrid Betancourt’s impromptu airport press conference, flanked by the  
bloody Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos and other  
military officers with undeniably gringo features was one of the  
strangest spectacles Machetera has ever seen. Even considering the joy  
she must have felt at being liberated after so much time in captivity,  
her effusiveness toward her liberators suggests that the time she  
spent in the jungle with the FARC left her with no greater  
understanding of the Colombian conflict than when she was seized on  
her presidential campaign tour seven years ago. Her extravagant praise  
of Colombian President Uribe and the Colombian army (who, she implied,  
had one-upped Israel with its commando tactics) sounded more like a  
campaign speech than anything else - minus a recent visit to the  
dentist and blonde highlights in her hair.

Betancourt mentioned how shortly after the helicopter lifted off,  
suddenly, somehow, the lead guerrilla was on the floor, blindfolded,  
and the soldiers, oh-so-cleverly disguised in Che Guevara t-shirts  
(the most cynical appropriation of this great man’s image ever, but  
also a confirmation of his everlasting symbolic power), announced that  
they were actually from the Colombian army, and the hostages were now  
free. In respect to the capture of the guerrilla, she said, “Don’t  
think that I felt happy; I pitied him a lot, but I gave thanks to God  
that he was with people who respect the lives of others, even when  
they are enemies.” Someone should suggest that she tell that to the  
family of the Ecuadoran who was killed with a blow from a rifle butt  
to his neck after surviving Colombia’s bombing of the FARC camp on  
Ecuadoran soil.

The FARC is an easy target these days, with dwindling support from all  
quarters for its armed struggle, so Machetera has little desire to  
pile on. Yet there is something strange about the fact that seven  
years on, a captive should emerge with so little respect for the  
struggle being waged and should refer to her captors as “humiliators”  
and “despots.” The only hint at sympathy came near the end of what El  
Tiempo chose to broadcast of Betancourt’s statement - if there was  
more, perhaps it wasn’t convenient to the storyline - where she  
pointed a convoluted message at Alfonso Cano, insisting that the  
guerrillas were not to blame, that they’d left the hostages alive, but  
it was simply a “perfect operation.”

As usual, though, there’s more to the story. Pascual Serrano explains:

The FARC had Already Expressed to European Delegations Their  
Willingness to Liberate the Hostages

Doubts over whether the Colombian army intercepted the liberation in  
order to present it as a government success.

Pascual Serrano - Rebelión

Translation: Machetera

Despite the fact that the Colombian Defense Minister, Juan Manuel  
Santos, has presented the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt and fourteen  
other FARC hostages as a brilliant military operation, the reality is  
that it happened exactly when European delegates, the French Noel Saéz  
and the Swiss Jean Pierre Gontard, had managed to make contact with  
the guerrilla leadership to begin their liberation. The FARC had  
already expressed its intentions in this regard, and the government  
had authorized the contact, which was closely monitored.

On July 1, a communique from the Colombian army, read by César  
Mauricio Velásquez, the Press Secretary at the presidential palace,  
signaled that the two European delegates:

“came to Colombia in recent days and asked for government  
authorization to go and meet directly with the FARC leadership;  
authorization that was granted by the government.”

The Spanish daily, El País, also reported this matter, the same day:

Bogotá has authorized the meeting of two European negotiators to  
discuss the conditions for future meetings to discuss the future of  
the FARC hostages, according to reports from the Colombian media. The  
former French consul in Bogotá, Noël Sáenz and the Swiss diplomat,  
Jean-Pierre Gontard, left at the beginning of last weekend for a  
meeting in the mountains not facilitated by the government, and may  
have already met with members of the guerrilla secretariat, the  
principal governing body, and even with the new FARC leader, Alfonso  
Cano.

According to this daily:

The FARC have declared themselves disposed to exchange 40 hostages,  
Betancourt among them (also with French citizenship), three U.S.  
citizens, as well as other politicians, police, and members of the  
Colombian army, for around 500 imprisoned guerrillas. Among the  
prisoners that the FARC would like to exchange, are three who’ve been  
extradited to the United States. One of them, Ricardo Ovidio Palmera,  
Simón Trinidad.

According to the French daily, Le Figaro, the French emissaries, Noel  
Saéz, and the Swiss, Jean-Pierre Gontard, met last Sunday or Monday in  
the Colombian jungle with a person close to the new head of the  
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Alfonso Cano.

Already, two weeks prior, sources close to the French government,  
indicated that France had managed to make contact with the new FARC  
secretariat, even though the French ambassador in Colombia denied it  
at the time.

In Colombia, the daily El Tiempo, close to the government,  
acknowledged that the international delegates may have met with  
Alfonso Cano:

Those charged with the task are the French Noël Saez and the Swiss  
Jean Pierre Gontard, authorized by the government to work with the  
subversive group in order to find a way to frree the hostages.

A source from the Colombian government confirmed that “the two  
Europeans began their journey to firm up the meeting three days ago,”  
in an unidentified area.

The same source did not rule out that the meeting had been with the  
guerrilla leader who replaced Manuel Marulanda Vélez ‘Tirofijo,’ who  
died in March.

This would mean that communication channels with the FARC, which had  
been practically closed since the death of ‘Raúl Reyes’ on March 1,  
had begun to open again.

Government Guarantees

“The government is guaranteeing the two facilitators passage to make  
these contacts. They have been given the facilities so that the  
meeting may be successful,” indicated an official.

The Colombian government also reported that the two diplomats were  
going to ask the FARC to accept a proposal for a meeting area in order  
to begin dialogue over an eventual humanitarian exchange.

The Colombian government’s version of the liberation is that soldiers  
infiltrated the guerrilla [camp] having tricked the FARC commander  
César, in order to gather the hostages and put them in a helicopter  
which turned out to be an army camouflage; giving the guerrilla leader  
the impression that they were being moved to a meeting with Alfonso  
Cano, the head of the FARC. The question that hangs over this version  
is whether the guerrillas in charge of the hostages already had  
guidelines for an imminent release, and were therefore easily and  
naively disposed to collaborate with such a suspicious transfer. Or to  
what extent the liberation was already agreed upon between the FARC  
leadership and the mediators sent by France and, at the last minute,  
the Colombian army intercepted the liberation in order to present it  
as a successful military operation.

In fact, it would be a similar operation to that which took place when  
Raúl Reyes’ camp was bombed in Ecuador. On that occasion, the  
Colombian government knew that liberation was brewing and preferred to  
militarily eliminate the guerrilla spokesmen even if it would abort  
the liberation, while in this case the release flight was intercepted  
in order to present it as a success exclusively belonging to the  
military and government.

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for  
linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the  
content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are  
cited.