Fellow FARC Hostages Talk Shit About Ingrid Betancourt In Out Of Captivity Memoir

A new memoir, Out of Captivity, co-authored by several fellow FARC captives of Ingrid Betancourt reveals that it wasn’t all group hugs and brotherly solidarity among the hostages. One former Marine from Florida writes in the book that besides stealing food, Betancourt “tried to take over the camp with an arrogance that was out of control.”

The book is a hostage memoir told by three military contractors who were kidnapped and held for five years by the FARC along with Betancourt. Keith Stansell, the marine, says that during those years Betancourt made life harder for the rest of the camp by refusing to work as a team and telling the FARC captors that the Americans were CIA agents. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he claims she stole food from other hostages and refused to share communal resources like a Spanish-English dictionary. Another ex-hostage said: “[She's] a person who likes to control and manipulate, for whom being in captivity was very difficult.”

But is any of it true? Tellingly, a lot of the other criticism aimed at her seems to be over men- she befriended one of the male hostages, which caused “intense jealousies” among the other male captives, and when she snubbed her ex-lover Juan Carlos Lecompte upon her escape, he turned on her and began a negative publicity campaign saying he feels “cheated.” So is this just a case of frustrated lust and wounded egos, or is Betancourt really the “haughty” jungle princess they’re accusing her of being? We’ll wait with bated breath for her memoirs, which are due out soon.

Betancourt vilified by fellow hostage [Guardian]