Betancourt's kidnapper 'sorry'

2008-04-16 12:42

Combita, Colombia - More than six years later, Nolberto Uni remembers clearly the day when he kidnapped Ingrid Betancourt.

It was February 23 2002, and the former presidential candidate was travelling in a jeep while on the campaign trail. Uni, then a fighter with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was manning a checkpoint on a lonely country road.

"The order was to detain all politicians of national stature," Uni said on Tuesday in the maximum-security prison he calls home today. That Betancourt, one of Colombia's best-known political figures, passed by "was a coincidence".

Uni said he regrets his role in her abduction. "I do feel remorse," Uni said. "The family - her mother, her children, her husband - a lot of people are suffering."

That remorse led him to pen a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in which he apologises and details the reasons for his decision to abandon the FARC in 2003, at great risk to his life.

Freedom for jailed rebels

The rebels are holding Betancourt and about three dozen other high-profile hostages, including three US defence contractors. For their release, the FARC wants a temporary demilitarised zone and freedom for hundreds of jailed rebels.

Sarkozy launched a humanitarian mission to treat or rescue her after receiving reports that she was in grave health.

In Paris on Tuesday, Betancourt's sister Astrid declined to comment on Uni's apology. But she told The Associated Press that to her knowledge there is no basis for reports that her captive sibling has hepatitis B and is near death.

"What is crystal clear for me is that my sister is weak," Astrid Betancourt said. "But that doesn't mean that she is so ill she's on the brink of death."

Back in 2002, Betancourt at first thought the uniform-clad guerrillas who stopped her vehicle were soldiers, according Uni. After radioing his commander to report the capture of Betancourt and her assistant Clara Rojas, he told the politician she was being detained.

"Her face changed colour," the 36-year old Uni said. "She didn't say anything to me."

Betancourt and Rojas escaped

His bloc of the FARC held Betancourt and Rojas for another eight or nine months. "She was guarded by 20 or 30 guerrillas," Uni said. "One day at 05:00, they escaped."

The two lasted half a day on the run before the guerrillas found them in the jungle and took them back to camp. "That was when her feet were chained together," he said.

Growing up in an impoverished part of southern Colombia, Uni said he joined the guerrillas at age 15, seeing few other prospects. He rose through the ranks of the insurgency, becoming part of the security unit of the guerrillas' maximum leader, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda.

Uni handed himself over to Colombian authorities and began a new life in Bogota as a demobilised guerrilla.

Today he too is a prisoner - serving a 34-year sentence in a maximum-security prison in the central town of Combita.

- AP