The story apparently originates in a Spanish newspaper, then was filtered through AFP, so take it with a few grams of sodium iodide: ’Mossad helped release Betancourt’.

According to Vanguardia, Israel, France and the US participated in the operation for different reasons: France because of Betancourt’s half-French nationality, the US because of the three Americans in the group and Israel in order to maintain good bilateral relations with Colombia and the US.

Vanguardia’s Tel Aviv correspondent said the Mossad operation consisted of two agents unknown to each other separately infiltrating FARC.

The pair managed to penetrate the Marxist guerrilla group so effectively that they ultimately controlled what FARC did or didn’t know, the Catalan newspaper said.

The Israeli and US secret services used unmanned spy drones to locate the camp where the hostage were held, the Vanguardia said.

(Hat tip: Rand.)

Also see Barcepundit:

GRAIN OF SALT INDEED: Charles is suspicious of the report by a Spanish newspaper -which is actually my hometown main paper, La Vanguardia- that Mossad helped in Ingrid Betancourt’s rescue. And suspicious he should be: it is so thinly sourced that it almost makes you cry. The reporter says he was told about it by an unnamed Mossad agent while sitting outside a Tel Aviv restaurant. You can almost see the scene in a Golan-Globus second-rate spy movie.

And it’s the same gullible newspaper that five years ago seriously reported on the “strange shapes” in the belly of UA 175 that crashed into WTC2 on 9/11. I’m linking to a translation of the original report which was, obviously, in Spanish, but I can confirm that the translation is correct.