US hostages’ chronicle critical of Betancourt

Three Americans held captive by Colombia’s leftist rebels for more than five years published a memoir Thursday full of wrenching survival stories and unkind words about Ingrid Betancourt, the most famous hostage who shared their jungle prisons.

The chronicle of the U.S. military contractors’ 1,967 days as rebel captives describes their pain and perseverance, mind-numbing boredom in jungle cages, forced marches in chains, close calls under fire and ultimately, a miraculous rescue.

But the most provocative revelation of “Out of Captivity” deals with Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician kidnapped a year before they were marched into the gulag they say she dominated.

One of the Northrop Grumman employees alleges she was haughty and self-absorbed, stole food and hoarded books, and even put their lives in danger by telling rebel guards they were CIA agents.

“I watched her try to take over the camp with an arrogance that was out of control,” Keith Stansell told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. “Some of the guards treated us better than she did.”

Stansell, a 44-year-old ex-Marine, was freed along with Betancourt, fellow contractors Thomas Howes and Marc Gonsalves, and 11 Colombians, when military agents posing as humanitarian workers in helicopters scooped them out of a jungle clearing in July.

Betancourt did not respond to efforts by the AP to obtain her reaction to the criticism. She did not respond to an e-mail, and phone and e-mail messages left with associates were not returned. Her sister Astrid Betancourt, reached by e-mail, refused to comment.

Former Sen. Luis Eladio Perez, a fellow Colombian who shared the jungle gulag, denied that Betancourt ever told the rebels the Americans were CIA agents. He told the AP he would not comment further on the allegations without reading the book, which was being published in the United States on Thursday by HarperCollins.

The three Americans take turns narrating their experiences in the 457-page chronicle. The other two agree with Stansell on most everything, but don’t always see eye-to-eye with him on Betancourt. In the book and in phone interviews with the AP, the two said they hold no grudges, even though conflicts were frequent among hostages during their captivity.

“These were literally concentration camps,” Gonsalves told the AP. “There was barely room to breathe.”