Hostage Nation (41 page)

And just as the gruesome revelations were coming to light, Álvaro Uribe was in Washington, D.C., hoping to land a bilateral free trade agreement with the United States. Although President Bush gave the bill a hard sell—“I urge the Congress to carefully consider not only the economic interest at stake, but the national security interest at stake of not approving this piece of legislation,” he said, calling Uribe a “good friend”—Congress did not bite. Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both said that Colombia needed a better record on human rights in order to have a free trade deal, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, added, “Many Democrats continue to have serious concerns about an agreement that creates the highest level of economic integration with a country where workers and their families are routinely murdered and subjected to violence and intimidation for seeking to exercise their most basic economic rights.” The bill never passed.

In the federal prosecutor's office in Washington, D.C., Ken Kohl readied for a slew of extraditions of Colombian guerrillas to land in federal court. For those connected to the hostage case of the three Americans, landing a conviction would be much easier this time around, since Gonsalves, Howes, and Stansell could actually go to court and testify as
witnesses for the prosecution. But in a surprising decision in February 2009, the Colombian Supreme Court (which has a final say in extraditions of Colombian citizens) refused to extradite Enrique, the guerrilla who had been the direct jailer of the hostages and who was captured during Operación Jacque. The Supreme Court stated that its decision—“Enrique cannot be extradited on kidnapping and terrorism charges because the crimes for which he is wanted were committed in national territory”—was based on careful consideration of Colombian law and multilateral treaties and could not be appealed. In a seemingly contradictory move in July 2009, the Supreme Court allowed the extradition of César, who had been captured in Operación Jaque and now would face charges of narco-trafficking in U.S. federal court. While the Department of Justice called to expand the charges to include the hostage taking of Stansell, Gonsalves, and Howes, the Colombian Supreme Court refused. Marc Gonsalves was incensed that neither of the captured guerrillas would be tried in the United States for their part in his kidnapping. “How is it that a terrorist who was caught red handed committing crimes against Americans is not going to be extradited to the U.S. to face American justice?” Gonsalves wrote in The Huffington Post. “As a Christian, I forgive [Enrique]; but as a citizen of the world, I want justice.”

Also furious was Álvaro Uribe, who accused the Colombian Supreme Court of acting politically in the case of Enrique and of being compliant when it came to the terrorists. Uribe was also at war with constitutional court justices for impeding his bid to amend the Constitution so that he could run for a third term. Even many of those who had supported Uribe in the past felt that his bid to remain in power for another four years was putting democracy at stake. His popularity began to slide, and his approval rating, although remaining high, reached a low point in 2009. In addition, over a third of the members of the Colombian Congress—most of whom were Uribe supporters—were under investigation, on trial, or behind bars for alleged ties to paramilitaries. And by fall 2009, those who had not yet been tried faced charges of “crimes against humanity” after a September Supreme Court decision. The head of the court, Augusto Ibáñez, told reporters. “The Court will study the cases of all persons who had something
to do with illegal armed groups, and if any form of support, back up or relation is found, it will be tried as crimes against humanity, according to international standards.” Uribe was ultimately denied the right to run for a third term by a February 2010 constitutional court decision.

Because the guerrillas were more paranoid and distrustful than ever after Operación Jaque, Senator Piedad Córdoba's job became even more difficult, but her goal was still to see the remaining hostages freed. In mainstream Colombia, Córdoba faced an increasingly hostile audience. She was publicly heckled and harassed. Once while she boarded an international flight out of Colombia, several passengers aboard began to yell insults and to call out, “Go live in Venezuela with Hugo Chávez!” For those who hated the guerrillas and supported Uribe's hard-line tactics, Córdoba had become a high-profile target. By January 2009, Jorge Enrique Botero, who was still following Córdoba as she bounced from the Colombian jungle to Bogotá to Caracas to Washington, D.C., was suffering from exhaustion and the effects of ceaseless stress brought on by two years of near-constant travel and by being consumed with the difficult topic of kidnapping. But still, there was something that kept him tethered to Córdoba: Botero believed she was the only person who could convince the guerrillas to hand over the rest of the hostages. He had taken so many trips into the jungle to film hostages in captivity, he wanted desperately to film those hostages finding their freedom.

Finally, it looked as though Córdoba had been able to pry open the negotiations, and the guerrillas had agreed to turn over four hostages to her and delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross. On February 1, 2009, Botero joined the group and boarded a Brazilian military helicopter adorned with giant Red Cross emblems. They landed in an initial meeting place in Caquetá, where they would rendezvous with the guerrillas to organize the handover. The area had been guaranteed by the Colombian government to be free from military activity. Córdoba and a Swiss Red Cross worker were speaking to the guerrillas when the terrifying sound of military jets rattled the cloudy skies. “It was one plane first, then two planes, three planes above
us,” Botero recalls. “Circling—each time getting closer. Everybody was terrified. The first thing I thought was, Uribe doesn't want this hostage release to happen. Then I thought, They're going to bomb us, but at least I'm going to be able to film this before I die.” Botero quickly called in a report to Venezuelan television station Telesur, because he knew that the two major Colombian news stations wouldn't air a report showing the government impeding the handover. Soon after, the guerrillas picked up Colombian military radio transmissions. Botero filmed the guerrillas as they listened to the intercepted message. “Photograph them at the coordinates,” the military commander said. “Then do a ground search in that area.” The FARC soldiers told Córdoba that they were going to cancel the hostage release. The Red Cross delegate tried to reach the Colombian peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, by satellite phone to get him to call off the military, but Restrepo's phone went to voice mail. At the time, Restrepo was holding a press conference at the Villavicencio airport, where journalists had gathered to wait for the hostages' return. The reporters had gotten wind of Botero's live report about the aggressive flyovers, and they demanded answers from Restrepo, who denied any military action was going on in the area. Finally, Córdoba and the Red Cross delegate were able to communicate with Minister of Defense Santos, who called off the military. The planes left the area. Santos later referred to the incident as a simple misunderstanding. In the end, one soldier and three members of the National Police were released to Córdoba.

In a press conference the following day, Uribe was irate that Botero had exposed the flyovers on Venezuelan television. “What's his name? The journalist Jorge Enrique Botero? He was not acting as an observer, but instead he was a
publicist of terrorism
, and that cannot be accepted. One thing is the freedom of the press, and another thing is to use the press pass to become a publicist for terrorism.” Botero apologized for not following protocol. He'd been invited to be part of the release as an observer for a nongovernmental organization called Colombians for Peace. “But everyone knew I was traveling as a journalist, as well. I'd arrived in Florencia with all my camera gear, and I'd secured permission to film.” Botero was smugly confident that had he not reported on the flyovers, the military would have continued their operations and the
hostages would not have been released. Still, he felt Uribe's condemnation like a noose around his neck. For several days, Botero locked himself in his apartment and waited for the storm to calm down. “I believe that Uribe was very irresponsible with his accusations, and I told my children, ‘If something happens to me, it will be Uribe's fault.' Some lawyer friends suggested I bring a lawsuit against Uribe in court for slander, but I preferred to keep things quiet and lie low.”

While the fate of the remaining Colombian hostages had become internationally uninteresting after the release of Betancourt and the three Americans, Piedad Córdoba continued to negotiate with the FARC for the release of the remaining prisoners. For his part, Botero couldn't help but continue to follow her. There was one hostage in particular whom Botero was determined to see freed—the first hostage he'd ever interviewed in captivity in 2000, a National Police colonel named Luis Mendieta, who had been kidnapped when the FARC attacked his battalion in 1998. “What impressed me so much about him was his serenity and his capacity to keep his men united,” Botero says. “It was before the 2001 prisoner exchange, and Mendieta had fifty or sixty of his men who had been kidnapped along with him. He was like a father to them.” Botero was also taken with the colonel because he was cultured and sophisticated, but in a very gentle way—something Botero found very unusual for a police colonel. But the thing that made Botero feel most connected to Mendieta was the colonel's family, whom Botero had become very close to while filming the documentary
¿Cómo Voy a Olvidarte?
(How Can I Forget You?) about their situation. “They had so much love—the two children, Jenny and José Luis, and the colonel's wife, María Teresa.” Botero says that after making his documentary and watching the heartbreaking footage over and over while editing the film, “I had many sleepless nights. For months, I awoke in the middle of the night remembering the images of that family submerged in suffering. I heard the cries of María Teresa when she read the love letters she wrote to the colonel; I saw his children cry [while] remembering their father.” Twice more, Botero would receive permission to interview Mendieta in the jungle. The last time would be in 2003, just prior to his interview with Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes.
“The colonel was destroyed. He'd lost his will to live, his ability to fight. He clung to God with a desperation that he'd never had before,” says Botero. At that last meeting, Mendieta gave Botero a letter to give to his family and a religious medallion that he'd been wearing on a silver chain. Botero gave his headphones to Mendieta so he could use them to listen to his radio. Four and a half years would go by before Botero received news of Mendieta. Among a stack of letters brought out by Clara Rojas and Consuelo González de Perdomo in January 2008 was a tragic letter from Mendieta to his wife. The colonel, who had been promoted to brigadier general in absentia, wrote that he was often chained by the neck to other hostages, had chronic chest pains, and was so ill at one point that “I had to drag myself through the mud to relieve myself with only my arms because I couldn't stand up.” Mendieta's daughter read excerpts of her father's letter on Caracol Radio in January 2008. The letter from Mendieta and the continuing brutality of the FARC caused a public outcry so great that less than a month later, more than two million people—the largest demonstration ever witnessed in Colombia—came together in Bogotá and other Colombian cities. The call to march against the FARC went viral on the social networking site Facebook, and thousands more joined in cities around the world on February 4, 2008, with a simple and straightforward cry:
“No more FARC!”

As Botero returned to the jungle in early 2009 to continue reporting on the war and the hostages, he found that Marulanda's ultimate goal for his revolution was still moving forward under the leadership of Alfonso Cano. “From what I have heard personally and from the documents they've produced, the FARC have not renounced the plan to take over the country; they have postponed it—pushed it back,” Botero says. “The reality is that Uribe came in and started a huge plan to annihilate them. So they've had to dedicate all of their efforts to defending themselves. But from what I've seen, they are resisting. They are continuing to recruit people.” By mid-2009, Botero witnessed an obvious growth in the ranks. “I also saw a push to obtain heavy weaponry, including missiles, weapons to take down planes, high-power armaments and long-range weapons.”

On February 3, 2009, Alan Jara, the former governor of Meta (who had been chained to Colonel Mendieta during his captivity), was released to Piedad Córdoba after seven and a half years in captivity. The Colombian government forbade Botero to accompany Córdoba on the mission this time, and instead he waited for Jara to arrive in Villavicencio. “I had tears in my eyes as I watched him come from the helicopter into the arms of his wife and son,” says Botero, who had interviewed Jara in captivity and met Jara's family several times. In a press conference two days later, Jara would express his anger toward both sides of the conflict that had kept him captive for 2,760 days. “I think that the President's attitude hasn't helped the exchange and the liberation happen at all. It would seem that President Uribe benefits from the situation of war that the country is living through, and it seems like the FARC likes to have him in power. In one direction or the other, [Uribe and the FARC] aim the same way.” Three days after Jara's release, the FARC freed the last politician they held, former assemblyman Sigifredo López, who had been a captive for six years and ten months. López had been held with eleven other lawmakers from the Valle de Cauca assembly. All of his colleagues had been murdered a year and a half earlier when their captors mistakenly thought the Colombian army was attempting a rescue. At the time, López had been chained to a tree as punishment and was missed in the massacre.