gloria Libertas

Não podia partilhar mais do sentimento efusivo do Noronha, após a libertação de Ingrid. O Mundo precisava de uma boa notícia assim.
Como complemento da notícia avançada em primeiríssima mão pelo nosso caro co-autor,deixo os detalhes do "salvamento" de Ingrid Bettencourt, como veio no TimesOnline.

Ingrid Betancourt, Colombia’s most prominent hostage, was freed yesterday along with three US military contractors and eleven others in an audacious raid that dealt the biggest blow yet to Farc, the country’s Marxist rebel movement.

“This is a miracle,” Ms Betancourt said after she stepped off the military aircraft plane that had flown her to the capital, Bogotá. “Thank you Colombia, thank you France.”

Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s Defence Minister, said that all the hostages, who were rescued from a jungle about 40 miles from the city of San José del Guaviare, were in reasonably good health.

Mr Santos said that intelligence officers had infiltrated Farc’s command structure and ordered the hostages to be taken by helicopter to meet Alfonso Cano, the rebels’ new military commander. “This was an unprecedented operation. It will go down in history for its audaciousness and effectiveness. The helicopters, which in fact were from the army, picked up the hostages in Guaviare and flew them to freedom.”

Last night Ms Betancourt described how she and the other hostages had been handcuffed and loaded on to the helicopter, expecting to be moved to a different rebel camp. Once they were in the air, “something happened, I’m not quite sure what”, she said, and her captors were on the floor. “A soldier said: ‘We are the Colombian National Army; you are free.’ The helicopter nearly fell out of the sky with all the celebrations.” She said that she still aspired “to serve Colombia as president”.

Yesterday’s raid is a coup for President Uribe, who has made fighting the rebel movement, the drug trade and cutting crime his priorities.

Farc guerrillas have been holding about 40 prominent hostages in the jungle and hoping to negotiate the release of about 500 of the group’s jailed fighters. The rebels, Latin America’s oldest insurgency, have financed their operations through hostage-taking and cocaine-running.