Hostage ordeal 'hell for body, hell for mind, hell for soul'

Published on Thursday 10 July 2008 22:38

IT IS the little things that are the hardest. For the former hostage Ingrid Betancourt, everyday experiences that many people take for granted – from smelling a French perfume to taking a hot shower – are potent symbols of her recent freedom after more than six years in captivity in the jungles of Colombia at the hands of leftist rebels.

In an interview this week, Ms Betancourt revealed that she had been "crying a lot" since her release last week in a daring operation by the Colombian military. She insisted, however, that she was mentally stable.

"When I think of things that I don't like to recall, it's very hard, and I have sometimes problems not to cry," Ms Betancourt said, adding that tears often "jump" into her eyes.

Still, Ms Betancourt described her first week of freedom as an "incredible bubble of happiness" and said she was trying not to think too much about her detention by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Farc) of Colombia.

Seated in a plush armchair at a chic Paris hotel worlds away from the rebel camps carved out of the Colombian jungle, Ms Betancourt said that she was not yet ready to go into the details of her captivity, but was able to describe the pitfalls of readjusting to normal life.

"I hadn't been in contact with hot water for nearly seven years, so the first shower I had, it was a strange feeling because it hurts," said the 46-year-old dual French-Colombian citizen.

She described that first hot shower as a "spiritual bath" to "get rid of all the bad memories I wanted to flush away".

She continued: "I thought, 'well I'm burning all the things I took with me from the jungle, burning all the bugs and things that stayed with me'," she said.

The scent of perfume – a common fragrance in France, where Ms Betancourt arrived to a hero's welcome two days after her release on 2 July – also threw her for a loop.

"I am just amazed at the intensity of how I can smell because in the jungle you don't have smells," she said.

Ms Betancourt said that doctors have warned her to keep an eye out for signs of trouble adjusting to civilian life, such as excessive bouts of crying or eating disorders.

But for the moment, "I feel quite stable," she said. "It's easy to come back to civilisation, hard to go back to prehistory," she said with a serene smile.

Ms Betancourt declined to give any details about the hardships she was forced to endure during her detention, saying: "I'm in the process of forgiving."

The former Colombian politician, who was kidnapped while campaigning for the presidency in 2002, said: "If I speak too soon, I may convey attitudes of angriness I don't want to convey."

Her children, Melanie, 22, and Lorenzo, 19 – who reached adulthood in Paris during her captivity – campaigned tirelessly on her behalf, helping to turn Ms Betancourt into a cause clbre in France.

Ms Betancourt credited her religious faith with helping her to survive her captivity and said that trips to Catholic churches in France were on her agenda, as is a possible trip to the Vatican to "say hello to the Pope".

Ms Betancourt, who has previously said that she spent much of her captivity chained to a tree, said it was the mental anguish – not the physical pain – that was the hardest to endure.

"When you have psychological pain, you have the fear it will turn you into a different person," she said. Ms Betancourt credited a host of mental games she played with helping her to survive captivity.

Little routines helped to ease the monotony and allowed her to claim a bit of autonomy over her own destiny, she said.

Such routines, which included meditating and writing, "are a little space where you can get a bit of oxygen in the face of such an aggressive, punishing world," she said.

Ms Betancourt said she allowed her chestnut hair to grow long as a way of marking the passage of time.

"When they kidnapped me, I thought it was going to be for three weeks," she said.

"And year after year, it was prolonged and I saw the passage of time in how long my hair was growing.

"I said 'it's going to be my marker. It's going to allow me to be conscious of what I lived through because, when I'm out, I'm going to forget'," she said.

"But with my hair like this, I'm going to remember that every centimetre of this hair is pain."

Since her release, Ms Betancourt has resisted her family's calls to cut her dark braid, in an act of solidarity with those who are still being held in captivity. Ms Betancourt, whose plight attracted widespread media attention to the Farc's hostages, has pledged to devote herself to winning the freedom of the group's remaining captives.

"When the last one is released, that will be the day" she cuts her hair, Ms Betancourt said, adding that "it's a way of telling those there that I haven't forgotten them".

Ms Betancourt later expanded on her comments in an hour-long interview on American television. "It was hell. It was hell for the body, it was hell for the soul, it was hell for the mind," she said of the seemingly interminable captivity.

Ms Betancourt said that one of her most horrible thoughts was realising that "human beings can be so horrible to other human beings".

Some questions she declined to answer, such as if prisoners were sexually mistreated, or if she played a role in saving the life of a fellow prisoner's child. "There are things that are going to stay in the jungle," she said.

Fear of death was a constant companion: "I knew that they had orders and that if I was to be subject to a rescue, they had orders to kill me."

WHAT NEXT

WHILE Ms. Betancourt is fted across France – her second homeland – after the dramatic operation that freed her and 14 other hostages on 2 July, the political scene in Colombia is abuzz with speculation about whether the once fiery senator will make another run for president.

Initially after her rescue Betancourt said that the presidency seemed "very distant", but she has not ruled it out and political analysts have already placed her on the list of possible candidates for the 2010 elections.

"Ingrid Betancourt's reappearance on the scene changes the political chessboard even if she hasn't made clear her intentions," says political analyst Pedro Medelln.

She certainly has been preparing for a presidential bid. In the black backpack she slung over her shoulders when she was rescued, Betancourt had a thick stack of lined notebook paper tied with a string. In that bundle, she and former senator Lus Eladio Prez had laid out a 190-point government programme.