Word: colombian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...became a cause celebre in much of the world during her captivity, especially in Europe, the three U.S. military contractors were, until their rescue, little more than a tragic footnote in the U.S.-backed war on Colombia's narco-guerrillas. The Americans were kidnapped by Marxist rebels of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) on Feb. 13, 2003, after the single engine on their drug-surveillance plane conked out in southern Colombia. Not only did they crash on top of a platoon of insurgents, but they had the bad luck of being snatched just weeks before the U.S. invasion...
...cruel guerrilla leader who helped hold three U.S. military contractors hostage for more than five years was suddenly prostrate on the floor of the helicopter. Colombian Army commandos, disguised as humanitarian aid workers in a sting operation to rescue the prisoners, were pummeling the rebel commandante into submission. One of the hostages on board, Keith Stansell, joined in on the action. The chiseled former U.S. Marine and self-described southern redneck reared back and socked his long-time nemesis in the eye. Then, embracing his now liberated American colleagues, Marc Gonsalves and Tom Howes, Stansell said: "Just one blow...
...Stansell's roundhouse provided the coup de grace in the three men's action-packed new memoir of their capture, survival and deliverance. Out of Captivity: 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle, published this week by William Morrow, reads like a postcard from a rain forest gulag as the authors recount forced marches, escape attempts, and encounters with snakes, tarantulas and malaria as well as meals of chicken-head soup...
...book, and in the authors' interview this week with TIME, the men make it clear that it wasn't just jungle fare that left a bad taste in their mouths. Some of their more unpleasant memories are saved for fellow hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian who was kindapped while campaigning for the Colombian presidency and was rescued along with the Americans and 11 other hostages last summer. The authors describe the married Betancourt as carrying on an affair with a Colombian hostage, acting like a privileged blue-blood - "a frickin' princess" in Stansell's telling - bossing around the other...
...Take the strange saga of Boss of Bosses Montoya, who headed the Northern Valley cartel. After he was arrested in 2007, Montoya presented such a security risk that prison officials decided to house him on a Navy ship off Colombia's Pacific Coast. But during his transfer there, clueless Colombian agents picked up the wrong prisoner, a paramilitary warlord known as Don Berna. After the confusion was cleared up, the two dons were eventually extradited...