Gee, drug dealing murderer, Bush/Blair ally and fascist Uribe sabotages Chavez’s negotiations, then the Bush regime secretly pays a ransom and coordinates the release timed to coincide with Republican presidential candidate McCain’s campaign visit, strengthening American intervention in Colombia, who’d have guessed? And the revelations all news dumped late Friday 4th of July. Hmmm.
Ingrid Betancourt arrived in France today after being held captive for six years in the Colombian jungle, amid claims that a ransom was paid to free her.
The Colombian government said that she was freed in an audacious operation after the military tricked Farc into handing the French-Colombian politician over without a shot being fired.
But quoting “reliable sources”, Swiss Radio reported that a ransom was paid of around $20m (£10m).
It said that the US, which had three citizens among those freed, was behind the deal and that “the whole operation afterwards was a set-up”.
The station reported that the wife of one of the hostages’ guards was the go-between, having been arrested by the Colombian army.
If proved true, the allegations would be hugely embarrassing for the Colombian government which was showered with praise for the efficiency of the operation. Many commentators had predicted that it would even spell the end of Farc as a credible force.
5 July, 2008 at 1:19 am
Yeah the whole “we used a fake helicopter” when I doubt very much the FARC has even one of those just seemed to fishy to me.
5 July, 2008 at 1:12 pm
It’s fishier than a big pile of fish smothered in fish surrounded by buckets of fish. Now has come the obligatory Jessica-Lynch-memorial video footage. As far as I can tell Uribe and the Whitehouse (and weirdly some Israeli involvement is rumoured, although http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2008/03/08/uribes-humiliation-being-downplayed/
) ruined any other effort other than their own then pulled it off timed to help their own political agendas (GOP hegemony and Uribe’s term vote and Israel’s burgeoning security industry).
5 July, 2008 at 4:11 pm
All neatly (yet smelly) rolled into one. Gotcha!
5 July, 2008 at 9:02 pm
And so far it is working, mentions of the ransom are called rumours and Uribe is man of the week and Plan Colombia and the FTA get a big boost. Bingo!
5 July, 2008 at 10:27 pm
RickB: This is why the blogs have to keep hammering the fact that FARC was paid millions of dollars to free the hostages. (If FARC was smart, there would have demanded Euros or some other solvent currency.)
6 July, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Chumps! Yeah Euros would have been a much better investment!
This seems a very Jessica Lynch thing all round, how it was staged and the media supplied with vids etc. But then PR firms were hired way back to portray FARC as negatively as poss, sadly the media need no such bribe to be nice to Uribe.
7 July, 2008 at 12:43 am
You aren’t the first blogger I’ve read who made a connection between the Jessica Lynch story and this one. It’s an interesting point.
7 July, 2008 at 5:00 pm
They are now trying to smear the swiss who talked about the ransom.
It’s even more interesting in light of this-
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/062908.html
GOP got details of domestic propaganda removed from Iran contra report and since, well…hello Iraq, hello plan Colombia to name but two well managed campaigns. Involves the NSA, neocons and Murdoch.