Perhaps he was trying to do the right thing, perhaps he was just searching for gloire, or perhaps it was a bit of both, but Dominique de Villepin seems to have been involved in murky business on the Colombia/Brazil border. The aim was to assist in the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian presidential candidate (she also has French citizenship) kidnapped by FARC terrorists last year. The plan? Betancourt would be handed over to her sister and a local priest and then flown out to safety on a French military plane. Sadly, for reasons that are not altogether clear the handover never took place, leaving Ms Betancourt in the hands of her captors and a large number of unanswered questions, of which the most interesting are whether there was a side deal to take a FARC leader to France for medical treatment, and why, exactly, the deal was aborted.

The other mystery? Whether anybody informed the Brazilian and Colombian authorities or, for that matter, Jacques Chirac, in advance. A number of denials, clarifications and enigmatic statements from the principal parties don’t shed much light on the matter. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal in English on this strange saga (the London Times has something, but the link requires subscription), but there’s this from the BBC and the more linguistically adventurous may want to try here and here.