(U.S. contractors) Book casts harsh light on former hostage in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Source: International Herald Tribune/Associated Press

Book casts harsh light on former hostage in Colombia
By Simon Romero
Friday, February 27, 2009

CARACAS: Ingrid Betancourt, the aristocratic Colombian politician greeted as a heroine last year after enduring years as a hostage of Marxist guerrillas, is depicted as a selfish and haughty captivity mate in a memoir by three American military contractors who were held alongside her.

"I don't want to attack her, but the truth is very savage," said Keith Stansell, 44, an ex-Marine and one of the authors of the book, "Out of Captivity," which was released Thursday. "We were infected enough with her behavior in the jungle," he said in a telephone interview from New York. "Now I just want to get immunized."

Indeed, Stansell and his co-authors, Thomas Howes and Marc Gonsalves, offer a far different portrait of Betancourt in the 457-page book than the generally accepted image of her outside Colombia as a long-suffering abduction victim who had nobly resisted her captors since her kidnapping in 2002.

~snip~
The book also portrays Betancourt as seeking to put herself at the top of a hostage hierarchy, hoarding used clothing and writing materials from the others, determining bathing schedules, hiding information from a transistor radio that she had squirreled away, even throwing a fit about the color of a mattress she was given. (It was baby blue.)


Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/27/america/colom.php

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http://img.iht.com.nyud.net:8090/images/2009/02/27/26betancourt-pic.550.jpg

Keith Stansell, center, Tom Howes, left, and Marc Gonsalves at Columbia University
to introduce their new book, "Out of Captivity," about their years as hostages.
(Michael Appleton for The New York Times)

[theoldman]

1. We have this crazy idea that all prisoners work together.

In the real world it's every man or woman for themselves.

[aquart]

5. No. It isn't.

Social Darwinism is exploded crap. The people who survived in the concentration camps are the people who formed networks to help each other.

All of civilization is people banding together to help each other survive. We don't live alone in the wilderness coming together only to mate on instinct then parting.

If humans want to live, we have to cooperate and HELP.

That's OUR real world. We're the social primates.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Mixed views on Ingrid Betancourt from this group, apparently.

This is the BBC News account of the book:

Page last updated at 12:15 GMT, Friday, 27 February 2009
Betancourt 'selfish in captivity'

~snip~
The harshest words for Ms Betancourt are from Mr Stansell, who accuses her of telling their Farc guards that the Americans are CIA agents, a charge other freed hostages have denied.

"Ingrid had sent notes to Sombra telling him that we were CIA agents and she wanted us out of there for that reason," Mr Stansell writes.

The 44-year-old former marine said Ms Betancourt tried to dominate the camp.

"I watched her try to take over the camp with an arrogance that was out of control," he told the Associated Press in an interview before the book was published.

"Some of the guards treated us better than she did."

Mr Gonsalves says Ms Betancourt put pressure on Farc commanders to keep the Americans out of her shelter.

"She wasn't making a request, but issuing a command," he writes. "She wanted us put in some other part of the camp."

However, he writes that his opinion of her changed after she agreed to share her radio with him.

"Maybe she was not the person we thought she was. Maybe Ingrid has a far more complicated and multi-dimensional person than she'd allowed us to believe."

Mr Gonsalves developed a close friendship with Ms Betancourt, he says, and came to admire the former Colombian presidential candidate.

"She's a tough woman. She used to give those guerrillas a hard time."

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7914287.stm

[Hell Hath No Fury]

3. Personally I could see why...

she might have trouble with the Americans "contractors" -- she's not stupid, she knows the history of Ameican contractors in that region. :shrug: I am sure she had no love lose for them whatsoever.

[Tempest]

4. I wouldn't want them with me either

And chances are she was right that they worked for the CIA.