Former hostage Ingrid Betancourt, in Canada to receive several awards, told CBC News in an exclusive interview her Colombian captors clearly hated her. (CBC)Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian politician held hostage for more than six years by guerrillas in the Colombian jungle, told CBC News in an exclusive interview that her captors despised her.
"I was a politician. They hated politicians. I was a person with some education. They had none, so they thought I [had] a privileged social background and they hated me for that," Betancourt told the CBC's Mellissa Fung in an excerpt from an interview that will air on The National on Monday at 9 p.m. ET.
Betancourt, a former presidential candidate in Colombia, was captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2002. She and 14 others were rescued last year by a group of Colombian military agents who posed as FARC members.
Fung, who was on assignment in Afghanistan last October when she herself was kidnapped for 28 days, asked Betancourt to describe her relationship with her captors.
"It was difficult because sometimes I had one person that was human, and it was like a gift. But mostly they were trained to be very cold, cruel," Betancourt said. "They were, I think, brainwashed in a way. They were telling them we were enemies.…"
Earlier this week, Betancourt arrived in Canada to receive a string of accolades.
On Wednesday, she was awarded the Medal of Honour by Quebec's national assembly. She was in Montreal on Friday to receive a prize for courage from Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean on behalf of Radio-Canada and Reporters Without Borders Canada, and on Saturday she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Montreal in recognition of her struggle against violence and corruption in Colombia.
Betancourt also appeared Sunday on Radio-Canada's popular talk show Tout le monde en parle.
