COLOMBIA: Ingrid Betancourt's husband hopes Juan Carlos Lecompte hopes air drop of her children's photos will raise her spirits

Record ID: 587022

  • Title: COLOMBIA: Ingrid Betancourt's husband hopes Juan Carlos Lecompte hopes air drop of her children's photos will raise her spirits
  • Date: 24th December 2007
  • Summary: (BN01) SOUTHERN COLOMBIAN JUNGLE (FILE) (REUTERS) AERIAL SHOT OF COLOMBIAN JUNGLE LECOMPTE ORGANIZING PICTURES TO BE DROPPED PILOT VARIOUS OF LECOMPTE THROWING PHOTOS OUT AIRPLANE WINDOW LECOMPTE SHOWING THE PILOT WHICH WAY TO GO VARIOUS OF LECOMPTE THROWING PHOTOS OUT THE WINDOWS
  • Embargoed: 8th January 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Colombia
  • Country: Colombia
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVAB6BFOG2FY5JSRLCZAPYNPJM43
  • Story Text: The husband of one of the FARC's most high-profile hostages marked Christmas and her upcoming birthday by flying over the area where she may be held and dropping thousands of photos of her children.
    Late last week, Ingrid Betancourt's husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, traveled to the eastern Colombian jungle community of Mitu where he made four flyovers of the heavily forested area, dropping some 22,000 photos of her children Melanie and Lorenzo, hoping that the pictures would find their way to Betancourt.
    Melanie and Lorenzo currently live with their father, Fabrice Delloye, in France where all three have launched an aggressive public campaign for Betancourt's release.
    Betancourt is a former Colombian senator and presidential candidate who was kidnapped by the FARC in 2002 when she and her campaign aide Clara Rojas ventured into the former demilitarized zone, despite multiple warnings.
    She recently appeared frail and despondent in video confiscated from captured FARC rebels. A letter to her mother was confiscated at the same time, revealing her sense of resignation. Lecompte said he hopes the photos will buoy her spirit.
    "She says that she does not want to live, but I am sure that if she looks at her son's and daughter's recent pictures - they were taken about six months ago - she will be happy and she will want to stay alive. In the letter that she sent us - that she sent to her mother - she writes that she has a paper with a perfume ad featuring an 18-year-old man and she said she imagines that her son could be like him, and that moved me to do this right now, her birthday is on December 25, on Christmas Day, and well, I hope these pictures get to her for her birthday, for Christmas," he said upon returning from the mission.
    Lecompte has made two other similar photo drops in the years that Betancourt has been held hostage, but this one was the largest.
    Betancourt will turn 46 on Tuesday (December 25).
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