The husband of a Colombian politician who has been held hostage by rebels for more than three years has undertaken a lone mission to send her a message of love — including dropping 7 000 photographs of her two children from a small plane over the Andes.
Juan Carlos Lecompte (46) told The Observer he hopes just one of the pictures he scattered from a friend’s Cessna will reach his Franco-Colombian wife, Ingrid Betancourt (43), who is being held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
”In the past week I have covered an area half the size of England by plane, road and river. The goal is that Ingrid should not feel abandoned and that she should see her children, who have changed a lot,” said Lecompte from the capital, Bogota.
Former presidential candidate Betancourt — whose children live with their father, Fabrice Delloye, in France — was abducted while campaigning in February 2002. The guerrilla group, thought to be holding 3 000 hostages, wants to exchange them for Farc prisoners in government jails.
”The government of Colombia refuses to negotiate with the guerrillas because it claims there is no war in this country. But you just have to look at the television and its daily reports of army casualties to see there is war,” said Lecompte, a former architect.
He financed the expedition to distribute photographs of Lorenzo (16) and Mélanie (19) with proceeds of the sale of his book In the Name of Ingrid.
”I started by going to the maximum-security prison where Farc leaders are being held,” said Lecompte. ”I told them my plan to scatter photographs for Ingrid in the Punto Mayo area, where I thought she was being held. But they directed me to the five states leading up to the border with Ecuador.”
He won a guarantee the plane would not be shot down.
”The flight took nine hours from Bogota. When we reached the areas where I believe the guerrillas have camps, I sat by the window and threw out 7 000 photos. Then on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I went by boat to San Vicente in Caqueta state, where Ingrid was kidnapped.
”There are people there who know the guerrillas, who sell food and gas to them. So I spoke to as many as I could and handed out 3 000 photographs. The idea is that through someone who knows someone, Ingrid will see one of them.’
Lecompte, who met Betancourt 12 years ago, said he carried out the mission without government help and that the area he covered was wide enough for the Farc not to have to fear an army operation as a consequence.
Since the abduction, the Farc have released two videos of Betancourt, an ecologist and French-Colombian national.
In Paris, the children’s father said: ”The most recent video is two years old. After about two years, you tend to lose the image of the missing person in your mind’s eye and that is painful.
”Mélanie is now a student of philosophy and Russian and she has a boyfriend. Lorenzo has gone from boyhood to adolescence.
”The photographs are like messages in a bottle you throw out to sea. They give us hope, too.
”My greatest dream is to see Mélanie and Lorenzo with smiles on their faces again — the real smiles of children when they see their mother.” — Guardian Unlimited Â