KEY POINTS:
For the first time in five years, proof emerged yesterday that the kidnapped politician Ingrid Betancourt and three American hostages were still being held alive by Farc guerrillas in Colombia.
Films, captured and broadcast by the Colombian government, showed a gaunt-looking Betancourt, 45, who has joint French and Colombian nationality, sitting chained in a jungle camp in late October. French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has campaigned for Betancourt's release, said: "Now we know she is alive, we will work relentlessly to win her release, and the end of her nightmare, as soon as possible."
Betancourt, who is married to a French diplomat, was kidnapped by the ultra-leftist drug-trafficking Farc movement while she was a Colombian presidential candidate in 2002. Colombia, encouraged by Sarkozy, enlisted the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, to intercede with Farc for her release. His mission was suspended last week after a quarrel with the Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe.
Both the French Government, and Betancourt's family, are claiming that the videos were proof that the mediation efforts of President Chavez had begun to bear fruit. The videos were found in the possession of three Farc members captured by the Colombian military.
Officials in Paris said they had evidently been filmed in response to efforts by Chavez to seek proof that Betancourt and other high-profile hostages were still alive. The videos also showed captured Colombian military officers and three American contractors, Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell, who were kidnapped after their aircraft crashed during an anti-cocaine smuggling mission in February.
Letters from the hostages - including one from Betancourt to her mother - were among other documents found on the three captured guerillas. Betancourt's sister, Astrid, said she and her mother were "very, very, very moved" to have the first conclusive proof that she was alive in more than four years.
"All we see is a photo where she is sitting at a small table and appears fairly thin, with very, very long hair," Astrid said in a television interview. "I had the impression that her hand was chained. It's a sad image of my sister, but she is alive."
Betancourt's son, Lorenzo, said the videos showed that "Farc have a human side and realise they absolutely needed to give a sign that she is alive".
He said that Colombia's President Uribe - who had "consistently impeded release efforts in the past" - should now reinstate the mediation efforts of President Chavez. Betancourt, a Green senator in the Colombian parliament, was running an anti-drugs and anti-corruption presidential campaign when she was kidnapped on a road just south of Bogota in February 2002.
- INDEPENDENT
