She said the hostages were forced onto a helicopter handcuffed, but were then amazed to see their captors disarmed on board and hear from an army officer, "You are free."
TOUGHER NEGOTIATIONS
The freed Americans all worked for Northrop Grumman and were captured in 2003 after their light aircraft crashed in the jungles during a counternarcotics operation.
Hours after their release, they were flown to San Antonio and taken to a military hospital at Fort Sam Houston, an Army post.
Amanda Howes, the niece of Thomas Howes, told CNN the rescue showed "there's always hope. There's always hope for everyone."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a self-styled socialist revolutionary who has been at odds with Uribe over his support for the rebels, called the Colombian leader to congratulate him on the successful operation, Venezuelan state television said.
Chavez this year brokered the release of a group of hostages held by the FARC hoping his leftist credentials could persuade the rebels to yield. But a Colombian army mission to kill a top FARC commander inside Ecuador triggered an Andean crisis that threatened to spill over into border violence.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had made Betancourt's release a priority, sent his foreign minister to Bogota.
Betancourt was kidnapped while campaigning for the presidency in 2002 when, against the advice of the armed forces, she travelled in southern Colombia and was stopped at a rebel roadblock.
The FARC wants Uribe to pull back troops from an area the size of New York City to facilitate talks over hostages. But Uribe, whose father was killed in a botched FARC kidnapping two decades ago, offers a smaller safe haven under international observation.
The outlawed rebel army, once a 17,000-member force able to attack cities, has been driven back into remote areas and now has about 9,000 combatants.
"There's always the possibility that they will be more violent," said Johanna Mendelson-Forman, analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The biggest challenge for them now is to keep what they have."
