On the first day that Jineth Bedoya Lima arrived for work at the offices of Colombia National Radio in Bogota, she was assigned to cover a story that would become her life. That day, in December 1996, her task was to report on a riot at what is probably the most dangerous prison in the world, La Modelo, a focal point for trafficking in drugs and arms between the forces of state, cartels and rival militias.
Less than four years later, on May 25, 2000, Bedoya returned to the prison after the massacre of 42 prisoners by inmates belonging to right-wing paramilitary groups who were terrorizing the country. This time, she was seized at the prison gates, kidnapped, tortured and raped, by the paramilitary groups' men on the outside.
Three years later she found herself kidnapped and held again, this time by the leftist militia that the fascists claimed to be fighting — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).