Colombian hostage rescue mission mimicked Venezuelan airlifts

Colombian military intelligence agents flew to the jungle aboard a white helicopter, staging a mock humanitarian mission that rebels were told would ferry their hostages to another camp for talks on a prisoner swap. The would-be envoys had honed their accents in acting lessons: Italian, Arab, Caribbean Spanish, and Australian English - 'identical to Crocodile Dundee,' Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Friday as he explained how Colombia's military duped rebels into turning over 15 hostages. Video filmed during the rescue shows the hostages filing grim-faced toward the helicopter in a grassy clearing fringed with a coca field, then embracing and weeping with joy after they are aloft and realize they are free. Presenting the video at a news conference, Santos said that Wednesday's elaborate ruse intentionally mimicked two hostage handovers brokered by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez earlier this year, when Venezuelan helicopters carrying International Red Cross observers picked up six hostages. 'In the last two handovers of hostages,' Santos told reporters, 'there was always a cameraman sent by Chavez.'