World in brief: Freed hostage arrives in France

Arriving to a hero’s welcome in France, Ingrid Betancourt said Friday that she cried a lot during her six years as a prisoner in the Colombian jungle. Today, she said, “I cry with joy.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife met the French-Colombian politician on the tarmac of an air base southwest of Paris.

Betancourt, 46, became a cause celebre in France after her abduction in 2002 while campaigning for Colombia’s presidency. During her captivity by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, supporters around France held candlelight vigils and benefit concerts to attract world attention to her plight.

Her release in an ingenious Colombian military operation Wednesday was greeted here with a flood of enthusiasm. Hundreds of people, some waving Colombian or French flags, many with cameras, lined up Friday behind police barriers around Paris’ Elysee presidential palace in hopes of catching a glimpse of her.

“France is my home and you are my family,” Betancourt said in an address from the wind-swept runway broadcast live on French television.

Addressing the French people, she said their support and mobilization in her favor “saved my life.”

Mexico City

Headless bodies found in Culiacan

Mexican authorities say they have found the bodies of three decapitated men accompanied by a dead snake and threatening messages.

A report from the state prosecutor’s office obtained by the Associated Press says the bodies were found Friday in a car trunk in Culiacan, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. They were mutilated and bullet-ridden. The discovery comes just two days after four other decapitated bodies were found in the city.

Authorities say the messages found with the bodies contained threats against Arturo Beltran Leyva, a reputed leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel. They have not identified the victims.

More than 4,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2005.