MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Betancourt withdraws demand for compensation from Colombian government

The two faces of the former presidential hopeful Ingrid Betancourt

French-Colombian ex-hostage and presidential hopeful Ingrid Betancourt withdraw this week a widely-criticized demand for compensation for nearly six years in captivity in Colombia.

Betancourt's lawyer, Gabriel Devis, withdrew the demand for some eight million dollars for damages to the 48-year-old and her relatives during her captivity in the jungle by the Marxist oriented, drugs funded FARC guerrillas, according to the attorney general's office.

The Defence ministry had said the demand was for some 6.9 million dollars, but the attorney general's office said the total request, for Ingrid, her sister, her mother and her two children, was for around eight million dollars.

The June 30 demand caused outrage in Colombia and led the former senator and presidential candidate to defend herself in a tearful prime-time television interview from New York on Sunday.

Betancourt then criticized the government's handling of her case, saying she was stripped her of bodyguards when she was running for president and allowed to travel on the road controlled by leftist guerrillas where she was nabbed.

The government says Betancourt had been previously warned and assumed responsibility for the journey.

Members of FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia captured Betancourt and her assistant Clara Rojas in February 2002.

Betancourt and 14 other hostages -- including three US military contractors -- were freed by the Colombian military in a daring and carefully planed action on July 2, 2008.

Ms Betancourt was held hostage with three US military contractors Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Tom Howes captured by FARC after their drug-surveillance plane crash-landed in southern Colombia.

Accounts of her behavior while in captivity are not enlightening. According to a book written by the US hostages the married Betancourt carried on an affair with a fellow hostage (Marc Gonsalves), hoarded scarce food, books and a radio and tried to order the other prisoners around.

Former hostage Keith Stansell claims that in an effort to remove the US contractors from the prison camp, Betancourt tried to convince the prison guards that they were CIA agents.

“We could have been executed because she wanted more space in the camp for herself,” Stansell wrote in the book. “It was reckless and irresponsible and I was so angry I could hardly see straight.”

Their portrayal of Betancourt, who as a French-Colombian citizen became a heroine in Europe during her six years in captivity and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, contrasts sharply with the description offered by other former hostages.