Former President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe said in Spain that the bombing of the FARC camp in the Ecuadorian jungle in March 2008 "allowed us to begin the process that ended months later with the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt" and three American contractors.
The attack caused a rift in diplomatic relations, which soon became secondary to the intelligence bonanza taken from FARC computers captured in the incident. The computers showed that Ecuador President Rafael Correa's administration had been collaborating with the FARC, despite official warnings by the Colombian government to help remove them from Ecuadorian territory.
Uribe recalled the two events during his speech at a conference which opened the XII Latin American Meeting on Digital Cities, held through Friday in the Basque city of Bilbao, Spain.
In his speech, Uribe touted the transformation that took place in Colombia between 2002 and 2010, a period during which he was president, in which he implemented a strategy to defeat the FARC terrorist group.
The president referred to the bombing of the FARC camp, which was just inside the border with Ecuador, and admitted: "It wasn't the best option we had, but we had to act."
He explained that he did so because "from that camp (inside Ecuador) the FARC planned and controlled the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt (the former presidential candidate of Colombia in 2002, kidnapped that year and rescued on July 2, 2008)" and killed "many Colombians."
"So, I had no choice but to face this group there," said Uribe, who recalled that during the attack "FARC leader Luis Edgar Devia, known by the alias Raul Reyes, was killed [and his computer and hard drives recovered]. That allowed the whole process to begin, which ended four months later with the rescue of Betancourt," because "Raul Reyes, as the terrorist leader, maintained control of her kidnapping," he said.
"With Reyes taken out and his data recovered, Colombia's Army intelligence was able to impersonate the terrorist group in communications with other FARC units and that is what led to the release of Ingrid Betancourt and the others," said Uribe.
Uribe also recalled that the Colombian Army's action caused "great diplomatic problems on the continent," referring to the rupture of relations with Ecuador over the incident.
Two days after the attack on the camp on March 1, 2008, Ecuador unilaterally broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia, and did not restore them again until November 26, 2010.
The Colombian president revealed that, in this situation, there was a lot of pressure to fire the commander of the Colombian Air Force, "to settle the diplomatic rift." But, according to the ex-president, "I said, if we fire the commander of the Air Force, sure, we might have avoided diplomatic conflicts, but we would have lost an even greater opportunity to give our Armed Forces the confidence to take on Colombia's narcoterror nightmare," he said.
"Then, I took responsibility and told the country that I was solely responsible for this conflict, and that the success the of the operation was due to the Air Force."
Uribe also said that he ceded the spotlight of the success of the rescue to then-Defense Minister of his government and the current president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, and said: "This success is yours, you should have it, it is very important for your future."
(Report in Spanish by EFE. Translated by Americas Forum)
