COLOMBIA: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, hostages released on Wednesday have said.
Ms Betancourt, a dual French and Colombian citizen captured six years ago, and three US "defence contractors" are among the high-profile hostages held in secret jungle camps in Colombia.
"It hurts my soul. She is very bad, very, very sick. She is exhausted, physically and in her morale," said one of the freed hostages, former deputy Luis Eladio Perez.
"Ingrid is mistreated very badly. They have vented their anger on her. They have her chained up in inhumane conditions."
The Farc released Mr Perez and three other hostages in a deal brokered by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.
Ms Betancourt was last seen in a video released last year in which she looked gaunt and despondent, sitting at a wooden bench in the jungle. In a letter to her mother she later wrote: "We live like the dead."
Ms Betancourt's husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, told Reuters at his Bogotá home that he already knew his wife was in bad condition.
"That is why it is urgent to find a way to free her," he said.
Mr Perez said the three American captives - Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes - were injured when their aircraft crashed during an anti-drug mission in 2003.