Ingrid Betancourt returns 'home' to France - but doubts emerge about 'daring' rescue - Times Online

Ingrid Betancourt returns 'home' to France - but doubts emerge about 'daring' rescue - Times Online: "The former Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt returned to what she called her 'other family' in France today as doubt was cast on the apparently daring rescue that won her freedom.

Arriving to a warm embrace from Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, the 46-year-old, who was largely brought up in France as the daughter of a Colombian diplomat and also has French nationality, was welcomed at the Villacoublay military air base near Paris, where she flew in on the French presidential Airbus.

But while she was still in the air, the Swiss radio station RSR broadcast a report questioning the official version of the operation to free Ms Betancourt and 14 other hostages – saying that money, not cunning, had clinched their freedom.

According to Bogota, the hostages were freed in an elaborate ruse by Colombian intelligence agents who had infiltrated the Marxist Farc rebels holding them."