Brasília
France botched an attempt to rescue Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate kidnapped in February 2002 by leftist rebels, Brazilian officials said this week. The Brazilian magazine Carta Capital reported that a French plane carrying a team of commandos landed in Brazil near the Colombian border on July 9. The plan quickly went awry when police detained members of the French team, thinking they were drug traffickers. Brazilian officials then became furious because they had not been consulted, and demanded an apology. France’s foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said he had merely sent a plane to pick up Betancourt—who has dual Colombian-French citizenship—after reports surfaced that she was to be released. “Unfortunately,” he said, “it’s all a case of rumors.”
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