Colombia's Joan of Arc

The French papers call her the "Joan of Arc of Colombia".

Ingrid Betancourt's fate as a Farc hostage for the last six and half years has obsessed the French media and her release has prompted blanket coverage.

Betancourt was born in Colombia in 1961 but was bought up in France and had impeccable bourgeois education in Paris. Her mother was a former Miss Colombia who went on to become a Colombian politician and her father was a French diplomat.

Le Monde asked how "a young slender lady, raised between the saloons of Bogota, the 16th arrondissement of Paris and the classrooms of Saint-Guillaume" could end up as hostage in the Colombian jungles.

"Ingrid in the primal soup was a flickering flame," said Le Figaro today.

"All French politicians rushed to rescue Ingrid Betancourt, because her case was moving, edifying, popular and in a word 'humanitarian'," it added.

As an 18-year-old, Betancourt said she wanted to become president of Colombia. She gained French citizenship after marrying a French diplomat in 1983.

She return to Colombia in 1989 and, like her mother, became active in politics.

She campaigned for the environment and against corruption and formed her own party – the Green Oxygen party in 1998.

Betancourt launched her presidential campaign in 2001 and was critical of the Marxist Farc group.

She was warned not to travel to the Farc's stronghold in southern Colombia, but went anyway to set up a meeting with the group's leaders. She was kidnapped in the area in February 2002 with her aide Clara Rojas.

Betancourt became the figure-head for 40 high-profile hostages held by Farc, who offered to released them in return for the freedom of hundreds of their jailed fighters.

Little information was received during her time as a captive, fueling mounting concerns about her health. A video was released showing her looking alarmingly thin. And in a letter released last year she spoke of her "living death" as a hostage. She complained of losing her appetite and her hair.

Earlier this year her former husband, Fabrice Delloye, said he feared she was "near death or already dead".

The concerns prompted the Colombian president Alvaro Uribe to sign a decree offering the immediate release of rebel prisoners if Farc handed over Betancourt.

Yesterday, the Colombian army freed her in an elaborately planned helicopter rescue along with three Americans and 11 Colombian hostages.

Appearing on Colombian TV looking healthy and with her hair in braids, she said she would travel to France on Thursday for meeting with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has campaigned for her release.

"I want to tell President Sarkozy — and through him, all the French people — that they were our support, our light."

She also urged Farc to release more captives and said she hopes to help work toward reconciliation in Colombia.

She said it is too soon to say if she will get involved in Colombian politics again, and wants to discuss plans with her family first "because they've been the victims of many of my decisions."