INGRID BETANCOURT cried in public yesterday for the first time since her liberation. It wasn’t a wet, sloppy sob like other mortals might indulge in after 6½ years as a hostage in the jungle. Just a brief tightening of the voice, a little moisture in the eyes, on the tarmac at Villacoublay airbase.
“For seven years I have dreamed of this moment,” said the world’s most famous former hostage, standing beside President Nicolas Sarkozy. Her mellifluous voice began to falter as she told members of the International Federation of Ingrid Betancourt Support Committees – and the television cameras: “How much I love you! How much you are a part of my life! How much I owe to you! I wept a lot through these seven years, in grief and indignation. Today, I weep with joy.” Betancourt had described her reunion with her children, Mélanie and Lorenzo, as “an orgy of kisses”. The declarations of love continued for a third day yesterday, from the moment Betancourt walked down the stairs of the French presidential jet to give Mr Sarkozy a long hug.
There have never been so many photographers and cameramen lined up in the courtyard of the Élysée Palace, not even for Mr Sarkozy’s inauguration. Elated members of the support committees (whose Irish branch was founded by Anne O’Connell) wept. When Betancourt entered the red and gilt Salle Des Fêtes, they applauded, then chanted “In-grid. In-grid. In-grid”.
She strode on to the stage, as self-assured as if she had just been elected president of France. In 48 hours, Betancourt went from the Amazonian jungle to the heart of French power, without showing a sign of fatigue. But even under the crystal chandeliers, the jungle was very much with her.
“You have no idea what it’s like,” she told guests. “No sky, no sun. A wall of trees and a green ceiling. I’m very ecological, but it was too much,” she joked.
“Lots of creatures, each more terrifying than the other. I walked an average of 300km each year.” To punish her for five attempted escapes, her captors made her walk barefoot. “It is an absolutely hostile world filled with dangerous animals, the most dangerous of which is man. Men walked behind me, pushing me in the back with their guns, saying, ‘Walk faster’.
“In this world where everything is against you, there is God and then there was you,” Betancourt said to those who had campaigned for her freedom. “Your love carried me.”
First words on French soil are in defence of Sarkozy: page 11