Word: betancourt
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...hostage--many of their captors little more than brainwashed youths with guns--facing snakes, insects, disease and constant movement from one dank jungle camp to the next. But the character earning the most scorn in their lengthy account turns out to be a fellow captive. French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, whose rescue in the same mission that freed the authors made world headlines, comes off as a "frickin' princess" more interested in playing power games than in establishing solidarity with her fellow prisoners. Her emotional relationships with the many men surrounding her, the authors say, provoked jealousy so divisive that...
...Whether or not the Americans' criticisms are fair, a certain resentment is understandable. While Betancourt became a cause celebre in much of the world during her captivity, especially in Europe, the three U.S. military contractors were, until their rescue, little more than a tragic footnote in the U.S.-backed war on Colombia's narco-guerrillas. The Americans were kidnapped by Marxist rebels of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) on Feb. 13, 2003, after the single engine on their drug-surveillance plane conked out in southern Colombia. Not only did they crash on top of a platoon of insurgents...
...book, and in the authors' interview this week with TIME, the men make it clear that it wasn't just jungle fare that left a bad taste in their mouths. Some of their more unpleasant memories are saved for fellow hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian who was kindapped while campaigning for the Colombian presidency and was rescued along with the Americans and 11 other hostages last summer. The authors describe the married Betancourt as carrying on an affair with a Colombian hostage, acting like a privileged blue-blood - "a frickin' princess" in Stansell's telling - bossing around the other...
...Like many hostages before them, the three gringos admit that living alongside their fellow prisoners proved almost as challenging as dealing with their prison guards. Colombian readers have been fascinated, if not irked, by their description of Betancourt, who was nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize and whom other freed prisoners have praised for her courageous, selfless behavior in the jungle. But as Gonsalves told TIME, achieving harmony among a diverse group of strangers can be trying even in the best of circumstances. He cited an experiment in which scientists put a bunch of rats in a small...
...Leon Valencia, a Bogota political analyst. The United Nations and every other international organization deem the kidnapping of civilians, even political leaders, as a crime against humanity. The practice seemed to complete the rebels' gradual makeover from peasant warriors fighting for a Marxist utopia to ruthless narco-terrorists. When Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen and a cause celebre in Europe, was whisked to freedom during last July's commando raid, much of the world lost interest in the FARC. Most analysts said the group, whose membership has been halved from as many as 20,000 members a decade...