Anne TootillIngrid Betancourt’s Brave Story of Survival
July 22nd 2008 00:03
Ingrid Betancourt’s suffering at the hands of guerrillas in the Colombian jungle must have been horrific. In comments to Europe 1 radio, she said her captors had chained her day and night for the first three years but that she was sustained by her Roman Catholic faith and thoughts of her family. “I tried to wear those chains with dignity even if I felt that it was unbearable”.
Asked if she had been tortured she said “Yes, yes” and said her captors had fallen into “diabolical behaviour” adding “It was so monstrous I think they themselves were disgusted. You need tremendous spirituality to stop yourself falling into the abyss”. She said she made herself a wooden rosary in the jungle.
She paid tribute to a Colombian soldier who she said saved her life. Corporal William Perez 36 was captured by leftist rebels in March 1998 in the jungle of Caqueta in southern Colombus where he was stationed at the time. He had a basic knowledge of nursing because he had worked at Bogota’s military hospital.
"He was my nurse in moments when I was in very bad health. I want to recognise him specially, because if it were not for William, I would not be here today," Betancourt told reporters in Bogota, grasping Perez's hand.
Perez, himself visibly sick, told how Betancourt fell into such a deep depression that she could not move her arms, and at moments lost consciousness.
"She was very weak, and I had to give her a lot of serum, to feed her carefully because she could not eat anything, anything she ate she vomited," he said.
"I helped her to get up and get down because she lacked the will even to walk. She couldn't walk," he said, adding that while the rebels sometimes had medicine, they did not know how to use them.
"The guerrillas had things there but didn't know what they were, so I would ask for one thing or another and give the medicine to Ingrid," Perez said.
"Sometimes Ingrid told me she wanted to die because she saw no way out. She was very sick. In the footage you saw that scandalised the world, she was already getting better," he said.
Concerns about Betancourt's health mushroomed after she appeared gaunt and depressed in a video taped in October and released publicly in November.
She became so ill earlier this year that her rebel captors took her to medical facilities in southeastern Colombia.
After her terrible ordeal one would think it was time to rest up, take a holiday or just spend some time with her children but she’s planning to get back into politcs. Ingrid Betancourt is truly a remarkable woman.
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