She wants to finish what she couldn’t finish twenty years ago. Ingrid Betancourt, who was held hostage for six years, four months and nine days by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced Tuesday, January 18, in Bogota.
“Today I am here to finish what I started with many of you in 2002, said M.me Betancourt, when of a press conference broadcast on the Internet. I am here to claim the rights of 51 million Colombians deprived of justice, because we live in a system designed to reward criminals. »
At the head of the small green environmentalist party Oxigeno, the ex-hostage, 59, will participate in a primary organized to decide between the candidates of a centrist coalition, the Coalition Centro Esperanza (Coalition of Hope). She will represent a current that wants to be an alternative to the face-to-face, structuring in Colombia, between the right in power and the left, represented by the ex-mayor of Bogota and former guerrilla Gustavo Petro, today the favorite in polls.
Voting will take place on May 29 and June 19. It will be a question of electing for four years the President of the Republic who will succeed Ivan Duque, who is not eligible for a second mandate, the Colombian Constitution granting a single mandate to the Head of State.
“For decades we had only bad options: extreme right, extreme left. The time has come to have a center option”, underlined the candidate, who has set herself the objective of combating insecurity and pollution. “I believe in a world with a woman’s vision”, she added. “Today I am here to finish what I started with many of you in 2002. With the conviction that Colombia is now ready to change course”, she said, referring to her six years of detention in the jungle.
This announcement comes nearly two decades after the kidnapping of Mme Betancourt by the FARC while she was also campaigning for the presidency of the country.
His captivity ended in 2008, thanks to a military operation, during which Colombian soldiers disguised as aid workers freed Mme Betancourt and several other FARC hostages without firing a single bullet. After her release, Ingrid Betancourt retired from public life, spending most of her time with her family in France.
The FARC ordered to compensate the Bettencourt family
The Franco-Colombian also spoke on Tuesday about the 36 million dollars (a little less than 32 billion euros) in financial compensation ordered at the beginning of January by the American justice against the FARC, for their responsibility in her kidnapping. “We have sometimes gotten into the habit of thinking that seeking justice is abusive (…). I have come today to ask that every son, every daughter, every father, every mother be compensated, compensated and compensated”, hammered the candidate.
Thursday, January 13, the American justice condemned the former Colombian rebellion of the FARC to pay 36 million dollars in compensation for the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt. The son of the latter, Lorenzo, also called Lawrence, has American nationality; he was therefore able to file a civil complaint in the United States, in June 2018, against 14 former leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, under a federal anti-terrorism law (Antiterrorism Act, ATA), accusing the rebellion of the « violation » of this extraterritorial legislation.
In 2010, Mr.me Betancourt had demanded compensation from the Colombian state for not having guaranteed her safety, but she had given up in the face of criticism. “I have been accused of being ungrateful, opportunistic, greedy (…). But the system of corruption that reigns in our country only recognizes the rights of bandits”, she castigated, saying to wait, like the other victims, “Truth, Justice and Reparation” investigations carried out by the Peace Court, set up by the 2016 agreement which ended a conflict of more than half a century with the Marxist guerrillas.
The historic peace agreement signed in 2016 between Colombia and the FARC has transformed the guerrillas into a legal political party and considerably reduced violence, although many armed groups continue to operate in the country, including dissidents from the FARC who have taken over the weapons.
In November 2021, the US State Department removed the FARC from its blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations, but without changing its position on the legal proceedings launched against former leaders of the former Colombian guerrilla.