Calmy-Rey’s Willing Helper (English translation)

Full coverage (in German, partly translated into English).The sun was at its highpoint on the second of July as the helicopter, painted red and white for the occasion, landed in a coca field in the middle of the jungle, some 300 kilometers southwest of Bogotá. Eight men and one woman got out of the aircraft. The supposed representatives of an international “humanitarian” organization were accompanied by two supposed television reporters. They were warmly greeted by the guerrilleros.

For days, the jungle warriors had been following radio reports and speculations concerning secret negotiations allegedly taking place on the highest levels. The reported object of these negotiations was the release of fifteen high-value hostages being held by them. The Colombian media had given prominent coverage to the arrival of Jean-Pierre Gontard from Switzerland and Noël Sáenz from France. The two envoys have been in contact with the bosses of the narco-guerilla for years; and now, according to the leaks, they were going to negotiate the modalities of the hostage-release with Alfonso Cano, the boss of the bosses. On 1 July, the kidnappers received their “marching orders” from FARC headquarters: a friendly “humanitarian” delegation was going to pick up the hostages in a helicopter and take them to Cano. Cesar and Gafas, the local FARC chiefs, were supposed to monitor the transfer.

Following the Chavez Recipe

The hostages had also heard the radio reports about the negotiations. But no one felt like rejoicing. They had too often pined for their liberation and been disappointed. Some of them – first and foremost, Ingrid Betancourt – put up resistance as their guards began to bind their hands before the video cameras. The operation would be delayed for fifteen minutes. Otherwise, everything went exactly to plan. Twenty-five minutes after landing, the helicopter took off again with the fifteen hostages, the two FARC commanders, and the “humanitarian” delegation on board.

For months, Colombian elite troops had planned the operation and rehearsed it again and again down the last detail. Psychologists, martial arts and meditation trainers, and even an acting coach prepared them for their roles. Television images of an analogous hostage release that took place last January under the patronage of the Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez served as model. Even the red and white Russian-built Mi-17, with place for two dozen passengers, corresponded exactly to the scenario of the January operation. Only the Red Cross insignias were missing.

The aircraft had barely taken off when the members of the “humanitarian” delegation overpowered the two FARC commanders. As Ingrid Betancourt later reported, the hostages were so overjoyed by the unexpected turn of events that the helicopter starting rocking from their jubilant celebration. Colombia had awakened from a nightmare.

The military operation, codenamed “Checkmate,” was yet another in a series of successful actions undertaken by the government against the guerilla and it provided a powerful symbol. After years of impotent waiting and humiliating negotiations with terrorists that were holding a whole country hostage, the audacious plan had struck a crushing blow against the guerilla – without a single drop of blood being shed. “The operation was 100% Colombian,” the Colombian Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, noted cheerfully.

The Swiss professor Jean-Pierre Gontard was already on the way back home when he heard the news about the freeing of the hostages: a goal for which he had “dialogued” with the FARC for some six years without results. As the internal e-mail communications of the narco-guerilla make clear, the “dialogue” itself was in fact the purpose of the entire exercise for the FARC. It gave the terror organization a political presence on the international stage (Weltwoche Nr. 27/08). But, in essence, there was nothing to negotiate: the FARC made demands that no constitutionally-elected government could fulfill.

Two days after the freeing of the hostages, Swiss public radio Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) had the next big story: the rescue operation had been “an enormous masquerade,” RSR reported. According to RSR, what really happened was that US agents had “bought” the merely apparently captured FARC commander Cesar with a payment of some $20 million. Frédéric Blassel, the journalist responsible for the report, conjectured that the Colombian government wanted to divert attention from its problems by way of the staged rescue operation. Blassel’s report makes ample use of an old cliché: South Americans are corrupt and incapable of helping themselves. Although the report was merely based on the say-so of an anonymous, supposedly “reliable,” source, it would be taken over unverified by the AFP wire service and disseminated around the world. This even though there are numerous aspects of the report that should have given the AFP reason to doubt its reliability: just to start with the question mark at the end of the title – “A Bought Liberation?” – with which the RSR attempted to evade responsibility.

Thus it remains unexplained just how and when the supposedly “bought” Cesar, while being watched by nearly half the world, was supposed to receive his payment. Ingrid Betancourt was there when Cesar was taken prisoner and she is sure that his surprise was not feigned. The USA and France immediately denied the report. But it is the reaction of the Colombian Army that is especially instructive: not only did it deny that any payment had been made, but it also made public excerpts from its video footage and the background to the rescue mission.

The entire operation was set in motion a year ago. A soldier who had managed to escape following years of captivity provided valuable information about the hostage takers. Cesar was well known to the Colombian judiciary as a murderer, kidnapper, and coca baron. Investigators set their sights on Nancy Conde, one of his girlfriends. Conde was responsible for obtaining satellite telephones and shortwave radio devices from Miami. With American help, the police were able to modify the devices such that the conversations of the guerilla could be intercepted. In February, Nancy Conde was arrested and recruited as an agent. The price for her cooperation: the Colombians promised her that she would not be extradited to the United States.

The $500,000 Ransom in the Suitcase

During this same period, the Colombian army destroyed much of the FARC infrastructure in Colombia. The cadres of the organization were now manifestly operating from Ecuador and Venezuela. Because they mistrusted e-mail and telephone communications, the FARC now transmitted their most important orders by messenger. Thanks to agents who had infiltrated the organization, the Colombian intelligence agency came to know its speech codes so well that it was able to manipulate Cesar at will by way of faked orders from the highest FARC command.

After some successful test runs, the Colombians were ready to go: On 1 July, Cesar received a (supposed) order from the high command to take the hostages to a coca field, where they are to be turned over to a “friendly humanitarian organization.” The media reports about the arrival in Bogotá of mediators Jean-Pierre Gontard and Noël Sáenz and their alleged meeting with the FARC chief (which never in fact took place) provided the right ambience.

Despite all this, the Sunday edition of the Swiss tabloid Blick took up the canard from the RSR. According to Blick, Cesar and another FARC commander pocketed between $15 and $25 million. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy is supposed to have offered the two FARC men political asylum: “After plastic surgery, [they will] soon be lying on the Côte d’Azur.” The source for the story: journalist Frédéric Blassel. Blassel again cites intelligence circles – and a “mediator” in the hostage affair whose name, he says, cannot be revealed.

Now, there are not so many mediators who have been involved in the affair. And in Switzerland there is only one: Professor Jean-Pierre Gontard. Gontard began his career as a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as did Frédéric Blassel. Gontard is a member of the board of directors of the Fondation Hirondelle, which Blassel helped found. (According to its by-laws, the organization is supposed to develop radio stations in the Third World that “dissipate rumors, draw attention to true facts, and avoid propaganda.”) Nonetheless, in response to a query by Die Weltwoche, Blassel insists that he has never seen Gontard. As for Gontard, he did not respond to our queries.

The Colombian police suspected that it was Gontard who was behind the conspiracy theory propagated by the Swiss radio. On Sunday, 5 July, the Colombian Defense Minister Santos made public that in late 2001 Gontard personally delivered a $500,000 ransom payment to the FARC in an earlier hostage affair.

That case concerned two kidnapped employees of the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis. Daniel Vasella, the head of the company, has confirmed the payment of the ransom, which, however, “as far as he knows” was not delivered by Gontard. A whole series of e-mails that were seized from the computer of the recently killed FARC commander Raúl Reyes, and that are available to Die Weltwoche, contradict Vasella’s half-hearted denial. What is so striking, however, is not just the secret-agent-style delivery of the cash, but, above all, the warm tone of the e-mail exchanges between the kidnapper Raúl Reyes and Gontard. The two communicate with one another like old buddies.

In the meanwhile, the Swiss Embassy in Bogotá has prudently taken its distance from the Swiss professor: Gontard performed valuable services as a mediator, a communiqué notes, but he was never an employee of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA). Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey hurried to congratulate the Colombian government on the rescue operation. Just one year earlier, she warned against taking military action and called on “both parties” to enter into dialogue. According to an EDA press release, the Colombian president is supposed to have called Calmy-Rey and thanked her for her help. Switzerland is an important trading partner, after all. And, when all is said and done, it is true in a way that the Swiss envoy did prove serviceable for the Colombian rescue operation – albeit without his being aware of it.

Translation: John Rosenthal