Colombia videos reveal rebel hostages alive in jungle

By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA (Reuters) - 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 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.

"I'm sending this note on October 22, 2007. I was proud to hear your voice on the radio a short time ago. 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.

"The FARC are terrorist torturers. ... These videos show the torture, they are an expression of torture, like those Europeans sent to concentration camps," Uribe said. "We will keep working for the liberation of the hostages."