Successful mission took just over 22 minutes as the commandos infiltrated the groups that held the hostages

EFE News Service: The commander of the Colombian army said that while the operation to rescue 15 hostages from leftist FARC rebels took just over 22 minutes, they were "the longest" 22 minutes of his life.

Gen. Montoya appeared late Wednesday night at the Casa de Narino along with President Uribe, the rest of the military brass and 12 of the freed hostages to provide details of the operation. Montoya said that, despite the clockwork-like nature of the operation, "we easily could have lost 12 lives and one helicopter and made fools of ourselves."

"We infiltrated the groups that held the hostages, Montoya said, "and we convinced them that they were talking among themselves. What we had to do was to bring the hostages together, which were some 31 miles away from each other, and afterwards move them north some 93 miles," he said.

Via infiltrated communications "we gave the order to the guerrilla chiefs who were holding them to get them ready because an international mission was going to visit." After that, he continued, "we gave the order making them believe it came from the FARC's top leadership that now what we're going to do is transfer them from one point to another and two of you are going to go along."

"We had two helicopters because we knew that there were 25 or 26 people" among the united groups of hostages, and the rebel leaders holding them sent a "requirement" that four and not two guerrillas would approach the helicopter, he added. To prevent that, the infiltrated intelligence operatives told them that it couldn't be that way because there was not enough room in the helicopter.

Before the helicopter landed, knowing that "they were listening to us," the intelligence agents used code words with different meanings, and once on the ground "we loaded them quickly" while in the "immediate area there were some 60 guerrillas."

Another detail the army commander provided was that once on board the helicopter they had to persuade the two guerrillas to hand over the pistols they were wearing using the argument that it was an international mission. Once they had handed over their weapons, the crewmembers overpowered the two guerrillas and announced to the captives that they were in the hands of the army and were finally free.