45 Facts About Ingrid Betancourt

Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio is a Colombian politician, former senator and anti-corruption activist, especially opposing political corruption.

Ingrid Betancourt had decided to campaign in the former "zone of dissention", after the military operation "Tanatos" was launched, and after the zone was declared free of guerrillas by the government.

Ingrid Betancourt's kidnapping received worldwide coverage, particularly in France, where she held citizenship due to her prior marriage to a French diplomat.

Ingrid Betancourt has received multiple international awards in 2008 at her liberation, such as the Legion d'honneur or the Concord Prince of Asturias Award.

Ingrid Betancourt's husband served in the French diplomatic corps, and the couple lived in multiple countries, including Ecuador, the Seychelles, and the United States of America.

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Ingrid Betancourt returned to Colombia and became advisor to the Minister of Finance and later to the Minister of Foreign Trade.

Ingrid Betancourt married Colombian advertising executive Juan Carlos Lecompte in 1997.

Ingrid Betancourt's mother was a supporter of Galan, and she was standing immediately behind him when he was shot dead.

From 1990 onward, Ingrid Betancourt worked at the Ministry of Finance and later at the Ministry of Foreign Trade, from which she later resigned to enter politics.

Ingrid Betancourt obtained support from the so-called "opinion voters", mostly young people and women.

Ingrid Betancourt was elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1994, against all odds.

In 1997, Ingrid Betancourt launched a political party, the Partido Verde Oxigeno, as an alternative to the traditional conservative and liberal parties.

Ingrid Betancourt ran for senator in the 1998 election, and the total number of votes she received was the largest of any candidate in a senate election.

Pastrana persuaded Ingrid Betancourt to endorse him, and she campaigned for him under the agreement of an anticorruption electoral reform to be adopted during his presidential term.

Ingrid Betancourt withdrew her support of the government and joined the opposition forces.

Ingrid Betancourt launched her presidential campaign on 20 May 2001, while standing next to a statue of Simon Bolivar in Bogota.

Ingrid Betancourt then began a campaign bus trip around the country to attend local community meetings.

At the time Ingrid Betancourt decided to go, the Colombian Army had been deployed in the area in an attempt to evict the FARC guerillas.

The government later claimed that Ingrid Betancourt had signed a document to release the government from any responsibility for what could happen to her.

Ingrid Betancourt urged the FARC to respect the lives and the livelihood of those civilians still present in the DMZ.

When Ingrid Betancourt announced her trip, the government confirmed that a security escort would accompany her from Florencia to San Vicente del Caguan.

Ingrid Betancourt stated that the government had, under constitutional provisions, the obligation of protecting any Colombian running for presidency, which included her.

When denied transport aboard a military helicopter that was heading to the DMZ, Ingrid Betancourt revisited the original plan to travel there via ground transport, together with Clara Rojas, her campaign manager who was later named running mate for the 2002 election, and a handful of political aides.

On 23 February 2002, Ingrid Betancourt was stopped at the last military checkpoint before going into the former DMZ.

Military officers have reported they insisted on stopping her car, and that Ingrid Betancourt dismissed their warnings and continued her journey.

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Ingrid Betancourt insists traffic was normal and the military officers at the checkpoint asked for their ID but did not try to stop them.

Ingrid Betancourt's kidnapping was not planned beforehand, said the rebel.

Ingrid Betancourt stated in an NPR interview that the government did offer to fly her but later reneged and took away her flight and then took away her bodyguards.

Ingrid Betancourt stated she was never warned that it would be dangerous to travel by road, that checkpoints let her through with no warning or attempt to stop her, and that the government encouraged her to travel by road.

In May 2007, a captured Colombian National Police sub-intendant, Jhon Frank Pinchao, escaped from FARC captivity, and claimed that Ingrid Betancourt was being held in the same prison camp he had been in.

However former hostage Pinchao repeated that Ingrid Betancourt was alive, and had attempted to escape several times from the FARC camp where both were held, but had been recaptured and "severely punished".

On 11 November 2007, Chavez told French newspaper Le Figaro that he hoped to be able to show Sarkozy proof before their meeting on 20 November that Ingrid Betancourt was alive, while on 18 November Chavez announced to the French press that he had been told by a FARC leader that she was still alive.

Ingrid Betancourt was said to be in desperate need of a blood transfusion.

Ingrid Betancourt urged neighbouring presidents Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa to help Colombia and seek the political transformations in her country by democratic means.

Ingrid Betancourt said the situation was at a point where "the vocabulary has to change", arguing that "the way in which we talk about the other side is very important".

Ingrid Betancourt thanked president Hugo Chavez "for his help in recovering the freedom of many Colombian hostages" during their meeting in Caracas in 2010.

Ingrid Betancourt gave speeches and urged the world not to forget and to continue for the liberation of the rest of the hostages.

In June 2010 Ingrid Betancourt requested from the Colombian justice, as other Colombian hostages previously had, monetary compensation under the Colombian law on protecting victims of terrorism.

Ingrid Betancourt presented her request on the grounds of having been victim of a lack of protection when her escorts were dismissed on 23 February 2002, which enabled rebels to kidnap her.

Ingrid Betancourt withdrew her claim for compensation, expressing her indignation at the way in which her undertaking had been distorted and the public opinion manipulated.

Ingrid Betancourt had suffered what she called a "public lapidation as if she was a criminal".

The Americans, held captive by the FARC from 2003 to 2008, stated that throughout their captivity Ingrid Betancourt claimed and took more than her fair share of scarce food, clothing, and personal space.

Ingrid Betancourt received the Ordre national de la Legion d'honneur shortly after her rescue and the Prince of Asturias Award of Concord in October 2008.

Ingrid Betancourt met with international heads of state and international personalities such as Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, Pope Benedict XVI, King Juan Carlos of Spain and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina.

Ingrid Betancourt's writing was compared to the greatest authors'; "just think of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and The Gulag Archipelago or novelists like Dumas and Arthur Koestler", writes Larry Rohter in The New York Times Book review.

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