Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was reunited with her children for the first time in six years today following her release by government troops yesterday.
Ms Betancourt (48) a dual French-Colombian citizen and former presidential candidate, had been held for six years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as Farc. The daughter of a former government minister and diplomat, she had turned on Colombia's ruling class to denounce their collusion with drug cartels.
Ms Betancourt, three US defence contractors and eleven kidnapped Colombian soldiers and police were rescued from the southern jungle province of Guaviare.
Her young adult children - Lorenzo (19) and Melanie (22) - flew into Bogota from Paris this morning and were reunited with her at Bogota airport.
"Nirvana, paradise — that must be very similar to what I feel at this moment," Betancourt told reporters on the runway, hugging her children tightly.
"It was because of them that I kept up my will to get out of that jungle."
"The last time I saw my son, Lorenzo was a little kid and I could carry him around," she said. "I told them, they're going to have to put up with me now, because I'm going to be stuck to them like chewing gum."
Colombia's defence minister Juan Manuel Santos said Colombian military intelligence had infiltrated Farc in Guaviare, where soldiers posed as members of a fictitious non-governmental organization that supposedly would fly the hostages by helicopter to a camp to meet a rebel commander.
"It was an intelligence operation comparable with the greatest epics of human history, but without a drop of blood being spilled, without one weapon being fired," President Alvaro Uribe said.
Ms Betancourt wept and prayed as she hugged relatives at a Bogota air base last night.
"I feel like I am returning from a journey into the past," said Ms Betancourt, dressed in a combat jacket and appearing in decent health.
"God, this is a miracle," Betancourt said after the freed Colombians landed in Bogota a few hours later. "It was an extraordinary symphony in which everything went perfectly."
She appeared thin but surprisingly healthy as she strode down the stairs of a military plane and held her mother in a long embrace.
A flight carrying the Americans — Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell — landed in Texas late last night after being flown there directly. They were to reunite with their families and undergo tests and treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: "Today a nightmare of more than six years has ended." Mr Sarkozy, who had had made numerous efforts to seek Ms Betancourt's freedom.
Ms Betancourt thanked Sarkozy and his predecessor Jacques Chirac, as well as former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, for their efforts to help her, adding: "I dream of returning to France".
France has dispatched a plane with her relatives and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on board to meet her in Colombia. An official at Mr Sarkozy's office said overnight she was likely to head to France on that plane.
Ms Betancourt was kidnapped while campaigning for the presidency in 2002 when, against the advice of the armed forces, she traveled in southern Colombia and was stopped at a rebel roadblock.
She had not been seen since a video last year in which she appeared gaunt in a jungle camp. The video provoked outrage in Colombia and overseas as former hostages told how she had been chained after repeated escape attempts.
"Suicide is a daily thought, one that we postpone daily," Ms Betancourt told CNN last night. "I was very sick, I think I was on the edge of death."
She said the hostages were forced onto a helicopter handcuffed, but were then amazed to see their captors disarmed on board and hear from an army officer: "You are free."
The three freed US defence contractors - Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes - were flown to the United States after five years in captivity. The freed Americans all worked for Northrop Grumman and were captured in 2003 after their light aircraft crashed in the jungles during a counternarcotics operation.
US President George W. Bush spoke by telephone with Mr Uribe and praised the rescue operation, the White House said.
Eleven kidnapped soldiers and police were also released. But the Farc, considered a terrorist organization by US and European officials, still has scores of other hostages, some of whom have been held for a decade. It wants to swap them for jailed paramilitaries.
Yesterday's rescue further weakened the negotiating position of the Farc, which is already reeling after the death of three top leaders, and bolstered Mr Uribe as he fends off a political scandal over bribery charges.
The successful mission could shore up investor confidence in Mr Uribe, who is hugely popular at home for his security drive against the Farc and his free-market policies to foster investment and economic growth.
The Farc wants Mr Uribe to pull back troops from an area the size of New York City to facilitate talks over hostages. But Mr Uribe, whose father was killed in a botched Farc kidnapping two decades ago, offers a smaller safe haven under international observation.
The outlawed rebel army, once a 17,000-member force able to attack cities, has been driven back into remote areas and now has about 9,000 combatants.