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<a href="http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia286.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia286.htm<br><br>
</a>July 8, 2008<br><br>
A More Plausible Scenario for Colombia Hostage Saga<br><br>
by Garry Leech<br><br>
In recent days, more plausible explanations for how the 15 Colombian
hostages were liberated on July 2 have appeared in several international
media outlets. The Colombian government claims intelligence officers
infiltrated the highest-levels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), allowing them to convince the guerrillas holding the
hostages to hand the captives over to undercover soldiers pretending to
work for a fictitious aid organization. The whole scenario appears
farfetched and there have been suggestions that the Colombian government
actually paid $20 million to the guerrilla in charge of guarding the
hostages and then exploited a decision already reached by the FARC’s
central command to release the hostages by staging the elaborate rescue
mission.<br><br>
According to the Colombian government, military intelligence operatives
infiltrated the highest levels of the FARC’s command structure. These
operatives then convinced the guerrilla commander responsible for
guarding the hostages that Jorge Briceno (alias Mono Jojoy), a member of
the group’s seven-person secretariat, had ordered that three groups of
hostages be brought together in preparation for a humanitarian exchange
agreed to by the FARC’s Supreme Commander Alfonso Cano. The Uribe
administration claims that Colombian soldiers disguised as aid workers
and journalists then arrived at the rendezvous location deep in the
jungle and retrieved the 15 hostages and captured the guerrilla commander
and another rebel without a shot being fired even though there were some
60 other FARC fighters in the immediate vicinity. The government claimed
it was an elaborate long-term operation that was conducted
flawlessly.<br><br>
However, there is a far more plausible scenario. The FARC had already
decided to unilaterally release the 15 hostages following talks with two
European envoys who had arrived in Colombia in late June to meet with
high-ranking rebels in the region in which Supreme Commander Alfonso Cano
is located. Consequently, it was Cano who gave the order to gather the
hostages together from the three separate camps in which they were being
held. <br><br>
Meanwhile, the Colombian government was seeking to bribe FARC commander
Gerardo Antonio Aguilar (alias “César”), who was in charge of guarding
the hostages, in order to gain their release. The Colombian military had
captured César’s rebel wife several months earlier and convinced her to
contact her husband to offer him $20 million in return for the release of
the hostages.<br><br>
Ultimately, the coinciding events of FARC commander Cano ordering the
hostages to be gathered in one place in preparation for their release,
the interception of this information by Colombian and US intelligence
services and the bribing of César allowed the Colombian military to
exploit the situation and stage a rescue of hostages who would have been
liberated anyway. The benefits of such a staged operation for the Uribe
administration are clear: the government would receive the credit for the
release of the hostages rather than the FARC; and the military could sow
seeds of distrust in the ranks of the rebels by claiming it has
infiltrated the guerrilla group at the highest levels. <br><br>
This hypothesis is supported by various sources that have been quoted in
the several media outlets over the previous few days and by certain
events of the last few months. Several days prior to the liberation of
the hostages, the Associated Press and other media outlets reported that
two international envoysNoel Saez of France and Jean Pierre Cotard of
Switzerlandwere seeking to meet with FARC Supreme Commander Alfonso Cano
to gain the release of the hostages. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s
press secretary, Cesar Mauricio Velasquez, confirmed the presence of the
envoys in Colombia and acknowledged that they had the Colombian
government’s permission to meet with the rebels.<br><br>
According to an unidentified source quoted by Inter Press Service, the
FARC Supreme Commander Alfonso Cano agreed to unilaterally release the 15
hostages and ordered that they be brought together in one location.
“Their release was planned for this weekend (Jul. 5-6) or the next, as
agreed by the Secretariat (FARC’s governing body) and ‘Alfonso Cano’
(their top commander) himself, that’s why they were brought together,”
the source claimed. “The (Colombian) armed forces found out, and
intercepted their liberation to make it look like a rescue.”<br><br>
The success of the military “rescue” may well have been guaranteed by the
Uribe government’s ability to buy the cooperation of FARC commander
César, who was responsible for guarding the hostages. Several months
earlier, the Colombian military had captured the wife of César, and
according to Swiss radio station RSR, quoting a “reliable source” close
to the operation, she was trying to convince her rebel husband to release
the high-profile hostagesformer presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt
and three US military contractorsin return for a $20 million payment
agreed to by the Colombian and US governments. <br><br>
This claim is buttressed by recent public comments made by Colombia’s
President Alvaro Uribe that his government had established a $100 million
fund to pay to individual guerrilla guards who released their hostages.
And then, last month, Uribe publicly stated that his government was in
touch with guerrillas guarding the hostages. Perhaps the most compelling
evidence that César might have agreed to release the hostages and
cooperate with the staged rescue mission is the fact that he and another
guerrilla laid their weapons on the ground before boarding the helicopter
unarmed. It is common knowledge that FARC guerrillas are trained to never
leave their weapons and the fact that César did so suggests that he was
quitting the armed struggle rather than following orders he believed had
come from his superiors. <br><br>
The Colombian government has vehemently denied that it paid any money to
obtain the release of the hostages. The Uribe administration claimed that
the unidentified “reliable source” quoted in the Swiss radio report was
none other than Swiss envoy Jean Pierre Cotard and immediately set out to
discredit him. However, in their attempt to discredit Cotard, they also
validated his credibility as someone who would know such
information.<br><br>
On July 6, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos accused Cotard
of providing the FARC with almost $500,000 in funding. Santos claimed
that emails in the laptop of the late FARC commander Raúl Reyes suggested
that Cotard was responsible for delivering the money to FARC envoys in
Costa Rica where it was later seized. Santos did not make the alleged
email public and did not explain why the Colombian government had
approved Cotard’s role as a negotiator the week before the hostages were
liberated if it believed he was affiliated with the rebel group.
Ultimately, whether or not the alleged email existsand if so, whether it
does link Cotard to the FARCit is evident that Cotard has been in a
position to obtain sensitive information related to the hostage saga and
his comments cannot be summarily dismissedif he is indeed the “reliable
source” quoted by the Swiss radio station RSR.<br><br>
Ultimately, the government’s version of the how the liberation of the
hostages occurred appears a too neat-and-tidy and a little far-fetched,
even given the FARC’s current disarray. The alternative scenario seems
far more plausible: that the liberation of the hostages resulted from a
combination of the FARC agreeing to release them, government intelligence
sources learning of the planned liberation, the bribing of the guerrilla
commander in charge of guarding the hostages, and a staged rescue
operation to make the Uribe government and the Colombian government
appear heroic. The staged rescue also allowed the government to steal the
positive public relations spotlight that the FARC would have enjoyed
through a unilateral release of the hostages and to hide the fact that
the Uribe administration paid for the liberation of the captives.
<br><br>
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