http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25507403/

I heard about this on the news today and thought "It was a shadow run."
ABC TV reports that the prisoners were being moved by columbian rebels. The army substituted their agents for the Rebel 'riggers' and just walked off with the prisoners. Gone before the rebels even knew they had been hit.

Actually it's even more complicated than that: someone of the army infiltrated the rebels and moved up the hierarchy. Then he gave a false order saying that the prisoners should be gathered to take the helicopter to see the boss of the rebels. That's how they were able to get the prisoners into the army's helicopters.

And the beautiful thing is that it was a face job.

Right. The best runs never fire a shot.

WHAT THE FUCK "3 rescued U.S. hostages arrive safely in Texas" that's the fucking title? I had to read half way through to even see a passing mention that Ingrid Betancourt was freed! Who the fuck cares about the 3 mercs?!!! Jesus, this shit is labeled as "world news"? Go here for proper reporting.
(no offense ment to Lil' Ninja - just saying MSNBC sucks)

And that is why I typically get my news from the BBC, despite being an American. The stuff that comes out of mainstream American media is just so warped, ethnocentric and shallow.

Seriously, they got Ms. Betancourt out? Very good news.

The american media is going to be more concerned with Americans rescued.
But DLN is right. It is a RL shadowrun.

FARC has been falling apart since this past winter when one of it's top men was liquidated in Ecuador and his laptop fell into the hands of the Columbian military- a run in and of itself.

IIRC, it was a company sized raid complete with close air support that did him in. Not subtle, but quite effective.

yeah, a big sized border crossing that po'ed Venezula, who was blow open as the sponsors of FARC, but locating him for the raid was another run.

heck the set up alone sounds like a run- cross the border unseen. the primary target is this man. we want him dead. We want him dead in country X in a loud way that he can't be hidden and country X can no longer deny supporting his org. Secondary app is to sieze his deck intact.

...BBC, CBC, Times of London, Sydney Morning Herald are my four main news bookmarks.

The only thing that bothers me about the publicity over this is the fact there are still hostages and the rebels will no doubt make "adjustments" (just like a Corp in SR would after a successful run against them). I would say Ms Betancourt may even have to reassess her political ambitions (and probably leave the country) for her own well being.

They have over 700. No way to get them all in a single operation. The best bet is to offer rewards and hope they some FARC members turncoat and surrender them for the reward and amnesty, like "Ivan Rios" bodyguards did when they whacked him and turned his chopped off hand in for the $1,000,000 reward.

According to a newspaper, it wasn't exactly a military operation that led to this but a big sum of money given to some FARCs to free the hostages. The whole "military operation" thing would have been made up to help Uribe and Mc Cain for their upcoming elections.
It's not entirely unbeliveable. We've got a lot of stories about hostages being used to help during elections in France. We've even got a situation where the hostages had to spend another whole year of captivity because someone interfered with the negociations so that the governement in charge couldn't take credit for freeing them.

The problem is that the newspaper doesn't have much to back this claim. They just say it comes from a "reliable source" and that :
1) Operations never go as smoothly as this one went.
2) Such an operation would have been filmed and broadcasted to show how good it was
That's not what I'd call conclusive evidence.

Anyway, be it true or not, I think that's also interesting as inspiration for Shadowrun.