- Title: COLOMBIA: Colombia videos reveal rebel hostages alive in jungle.
- Date: 1st December 2007
- Summary: (BN04) UNIDENTIFIED JUNGLE REGION, COLOMBIA (RECENT) (GOVERNMENT TV) VARIOUS OF HOSTAGE INGRID BETANCOURT IN JUNGLE
- Embargoed: 16th December 2007 12:00
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- Location: Colombia
- Country: Colombia
- Topics: Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVAAWFO7OJCMO15TZ70QGS8U06Q9
- Story Text: Video of rebel hostages shows them alive in jungle.
Gaunt and despondent, she sits in a ragtag shirt in the Colombian jungle, her long hair slung across one shoulder as she stares silently at the ground.
Grainy video images of Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt, captured from leftist guerrillas who have held her for five years, on Friday (November 30) revealed the grim conditions endured by kidnap victims in secret camps.
The Colombian government's broadcast of the five videos, most recorded in late October, is the first proof since 2003 that Betancourt, three U.S.
contract workers and a dozen kidnapped Colombians were still alive.
In one of the videos, Betancourt, a former presidential candidate kidnapped in southern Colombia in 2002, sits despondently next to a wooden bench in a jungle clearing, her face etched with lines and her thin arms bared.
Other recordings show U.S. contract workers Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Howes looking fitter than Betancourt, standing with arms folded, brushing away bugs and talking to the camera as an armed rebel stands nearby.
The three men were captured in 2003 when their light plane crashed while on a counter-narcotics mission.
"I love you very much, you and the boys," Thomas Howes, one of Americans, tells his family in a clip played on local television.
The broadcast showed a letter and last will Howes had sent to his family with the signatures of his two fellow captive Americans appearing as witnesses on the note paper.
The evidence was released a week after Bogota suspended efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to broker a deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, to free its hostages -- some held for nearly a decade.
The failed talks triggered a diplomatic dispute between Venezuela and Colombia, but President Alvaro Uribe said on Friday he was willing to keep working with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to reach a hostage deal with the rebels.
A staunch ally to Washington, Uribe has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid to fight the rebels and the huge cocaine trade that helps fuel Latin America's oldest insurgency.
Colombian Sen. Piedad Cordoba, who had acted as a mediator with the FARC, said the captured videos had been meant for Chavez to see. But the French government said the leftist Venezuelan leader's mediating role was "a thing of the past."
"We're still left with the question of why-- if these documents were for (Venezuelan) President (Hugo) Chavez-- is there a letter from a hostage to (FARC leader) Mono Jojoy asking him to change him from that camp.
That doesn't make much sense," said Colombian Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo.
Authorities gave relatives captured letters, photographs and audio recordings. Yolanda Pulecio, Betancourt's mother, received a 15-page letter written by her hostage daughter.
Weakened by Uribe's security campaign, the FARC has been driven back into the jungles, but they hold hundreds of hostages for political leverage and ransom. The guerrillas want to swap 50 key captives for jailed comrades.
Attempts to reach a hostage deal have been stymied by rebel demands that, to start talks, Uribe must pull troops from an area the size of New York City. Uribe, popular for his hardline stance, refuses saying it would allow the rebels to regroup. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS - SOURCE TO BE VERIFIED
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