Sarkozy basks in Betancourt's arrival

Former hostage Ingrid Betancourt arrived in France to a hero’s welcome today after six years as a captive in the Colombian jungle.

Ms Betancourt said she “cried a lot during this time from pain and indignation,” Today, she said, “I cry with joy.”

President Nicolas Sarkozy and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy greeted the French-Colombian politician with hugs, kisses and broad smiles at the Villacoublay air base outside Paris.

Ms Betancourt’s children and other family members also descended from the French government plane and joined their mother and the presidential couple.

France is to throw Ms Betancourt, her family and supporters a party in the presidential palace.

Ms Betancourt was campaigning for Colombia’s presidency when she was kidnapped in 2002. She became a cause celebre in France, with her portrait hung on town halls and constant street rallies by supporters.

She was freed on Wednesday in a daring Colombian operation involving military spies who tricked FARC rebels into handing over Ms Betancourt and 14 other hostages without firing a shot.

Ms Betancourt spent much of her childhood in France and attended university at Paris’ Institut d’Etudes Politiques. Her children Melanie, 22, and Lorenzo, 19, grew up in Paris during her captivity.

Ms Betancourt was reunited with her children in Colombia yesterday. Before her arrival in France, she said she was proud of how her children had forged “extraordinary characters” in her absence.

She recalled humiliating treatment by the FARC, saying she had to wear chains 24 hours a day for three years.

“When you have a chain around your neck, you have to keep your head down and try to accept your fate without succumbing entirely to humiliation, without forgetting who you are,” she said.

“I reached a moment where I understood that death was a possibility,” she said. “I had seen my companions die, I knew that death arrives very, very quickly in the jungle.”

Ms Betancourt described her illnesses as “a series of problems that piled on top of each other, I couldn’t nourish myself, I visibly lost weight, I lost the capacity to move, I was prostrated in my hammock, I had trouble drinking.”

She said she reached “a truly critical situation” but was helped by a male nurse who helped get her medicine.

Mr Sarkozy made freeing Ms Betancourt a priority the night he was elected France’s president in May 2007. The previous government of Jacques Chirac also worked for her release, and then-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is a long-time friend of Ms Betancourt’s.

Ms Betancourt’s release was a big image boost for Mr Sarkozy, with even his rivals acknowledging that his diplomatic efforts kept up the pressure on Colombia to find ways to get her released.

But Mr Sarkozy had been pushing for negotiations with the FARC, not a military operation. And France had no role in the operation to free her.

Mr Sarkozy’s closest aide, Elysee chief of staff Claude Gueant, acknowledged that France learned of Ms Betancourt’s release just 15 minutes before Colombian media broke the news.

Meanwhile the pope announced today that he meet Ms Betancourt as soon as his schedule permits.

Earlier he had sent message expressing his delight that she was freed.