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The Eternal Hostage

Betancourt Family Still Waiting for Freedom

By Jens Glüsing and Stefan Simons

An international network of politicians, friends and family members has spent the past six years trying to liberate Ingrid Betancourt, the former Colombian presidential candidate, from the hands of FARC rebels.

Juan Carlos Lecompte is not a religious person, and he has never been interested in questions of faith, his spiritual welfare, the church or the pope. A PR specialist, he prefers to spend his time studying politics, the economy and market data. Nevertheless, he prays once a week, every Saturday at noon. He prays fervently and with the hope of someone who has almost lost all hope. He prays for the life of his wife.

It's what he promised her, and he knows that she also prays, at exactly the same hour and on the same day each week, for him and their children. In fact, it is a promise they made to each other in case they were ever separated. That was almost six years ago, before Lecompte's wife, Ingrid Betancourt, 46, was kidnapped by the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist guerilla organization. Betancourt, a politician, was campaigning for the Colombian presidency at the time, an office that ranks among the world's most dangerous jobs. Their mutual promise to pray for each other every Saturday was her personal version of life insurance.

"Ingrid is a very religious woman," says Lecompte, 48, "her faith helps her survive."

He seems a bit lost in their two-story penthouse apartment in the northern section of the Colombian capital, Bogotá. A picture of a peace dove hangs on the wall next to a naïve depiction of the Ecuadorian capital, Quito, that Betancourt painted herself. Lecompte, wearing jeans and a sweater, is constantly jumping up, rushing through the rooms of the apartment with no apparent purpose and nervously running his hand through his hair. Dozens of candles are lit in a corner of the living room, marking the spot where his wife used to pray.

Betancourt's term of endearment for her husband, who she married in Hawaii in 1996, is "mi Juanqui." She last used the nickname in a cry of help from the jungle, which police officers found on three guerillas captured in Bogotá in early December. It was the first sign of life from Betancourt in four years.

Since then the horse trading in human lives that has plagued Colombia for years has gained in intensity, a series of arrangements in which hostages held by the rebels are traded for rebels held in government prisons. These exchanges often hinge on certain conditions being met, but they also revolve around large ransom sums and the safeguarding of the drug trade.

Shortly before Christmas the FARC announced that it planned to release Clara Rojas, Betancourt's presidential running mate, Rojas's three-year-old son, who was born in captivity, and Consuela Gonzalez, a former Colombian lawmaker. Both Rojas and Gonzalez were kidnapped more than six years ago.

Hugo Chavez, the narcissistic and PR-hungry Venezuelan president, who has excellent connections to the rebels, arranged to have several aircraft fly the hostages out of Colombia. Hollywood director Oliver Stone planned to film the release, and overjoyed family members, filled with anticipation, had even bought Christmas presents for the hostages.

But then the FARC guerillas cancelled the hostage transfer, claiming that military operations in their territory had hampered the release. But the truth was that the guerilla group no longer had Emmanuel, Rojas's child, who has been in the care of a government orphanage in Bogotá since 2005. When the boy was only eight months old and seriously ill, the guerillas handed him over to a farmer who was asked to raise him. Authorities later placed the boy in a government orphanage. A DNA test confirmed his parentage.

FARC finally released Emmanuel's mother and Gonzalez last Thursday. The rebels had arranged to have the coordinates of the jungle transfer locations delivered to Chavez, who sent two helicopters to pick up the women. Before freeing the hostages, the guerillas announced that the release was an "act of redress" for Chavez.

The release has also given Lecompte new hope. He has deliberately left the couple's apartment untouched. The worn upholstered chairs in the living room are already losing their stuffing, the curtains are faded and the paint is peeling from the walls. He wants his wife to see the apartment the way it looked when she was abducted.

Almost 9,000 kilometers (5,590 miles) to the east of Bogotá, across an ocean and half a continent, in the French city of Reims, Fabrice Delloye, 56, waits just as anxiously for the return of the kidnapped woman -- a woman who left him and their children 18 years ago. An economist, Delloye has nothing but praise for his former wife: "She is a wonderful person. She is committed to her beliefs, she is tough and she has the uncompromising disposition of a fighter." He describes Betancourt's relationship with their children, without a trace of bitterness, as "loving, compassionate and full of understanding."

When 19-year-old Lorenzo remembers his mother, he describes a women filled with devotion and tenderness for her children. But the videos of his mother, which came with a letter from her in December, have superimposed the image of a tortured, emaciated woman over his happy memories of the past. "Mama is like a candle that is slowly consuming itself," says Lorenzo.

Lorenzo, who studies law and political science in Paris, is adept at juggling a busy schedule. From his student apartment in Paris's fifth arrondissement, he rushes to a press conference with the city's mayor, who has had an oversized portrait of Betancourt mounted on the side of city hall. After the dedication ceremony, Lorenzo and a spokesman for the French president appear as guests on the Canal+ network's evening news. He also appears on TV talk shows, gives radio interviews and, during the Christmas season, participated in a vigil in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Lorenzo's older sister Mélanie, 22, long played the role of the family's torchbearer -- of the strong, seemingly unshakable daughter. But the father, Fabrice, says: "it almost destroyed her, to the point where she could hardly stand it anymore when strangers would spontaneously shake her hand in Paris." Mélanie, who is musical and has a flair for languages, fled to New York, where she now attends film school and tries "to lead a normal life."