{news} Fw: USGP-INT Ingrid Betancourt suffering from ill-health, say released captives

[Justine McCabe]

 http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2749608820080228
>
> Ex-FARC hostages say Betancourt "very sick" in jungle
> Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:36pm EST
> By Patrick Markey
>
> BOGOTA (Reuters) - French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, held
> hostage by FARC guerrillas, is "very sick" in a rebel jungle camp and
> has been mistreated by her captors, two hostages released on Wednesday 
> said.
>
> Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian citizen captured six years ago, and
> three U.S. contractors are among the high-profile hostages held in
> secret jungle camps by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
> FARC, guerrillas.
>
> "As a woman and a mother, I want to send a message to Ingrid Betancourt,
> who has been left behind in the jungle very sick," Gloria Polanco, a
> former lawmaker released after more than six years in captivity, told
> Caracol radio.
>
> The FARC released Polanco and three other hostages in a deal brokered by
> left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has riled Bogota and
> Washington by calling for the guerrillas to be taken off international
> terrorism lists.
>
> Another freed hostage, ex-lawmaker Luis Eladio Perez, said Betancourt
> suffered from liver problems and been badly mistreated by her captors.
>
> "It hurts my soul, she is very bad, very, very sick. She is physically
> and morally exhausted," he said. "Ingrid is mistreated very badly, they
> have vented their anger on her, they have her chained up in inhumane
> conditions."
>
> Betancourt was last seen in a rebel video released last year where she
> looked gaunt and despondent in front of the camera, sitting at a wooden
> bench in the jungle. In a letter to her mother she wrote: "We live like
> the dead."
>
> Perez said the three Americans -- Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and
> Thomas Howes -- all suffered from jungle illnesses and injuries received
> when their aircraft crashed in the jungle during an anti-drug mission in
> 2003.
>
> He said he had spent the last six months of his captivity sleeping in
> the same camp as the three U.S. Defense Department contractors, who
> recently marked five years in rebel hands.
>
> A recent decision by a U.S. judge to sentence a rebel commander, alias
> "Simon Trinidad," to 60 years in prison for his part in the kidnapping
> of the Americans hit the three men hard. The rebels say the U.S.
> captives must be exchanged for two guerrilla commanders jailed in the
> United States.
>
> "They are pretty down, especially after the sentencing of Simon
> Trinidad," Perez said.
>
> A deal to release all high profile rebel hostages has been stalled over
> a rebel demand that Uribe demilitarize an area to facilitate hostage
> exchange. Uribe rejects the condition because he says it will allow the
> FARC to regroup.
>
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