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The ex-husband of kidnapped former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt demanded Thursday that Colombia's main rebel group provide proof that she and some 60 other hostages are alive.
Fabrice Delloye, a French diplomat who was married to the politician for a decade, also questioned whether a policeman who escaped more than eight years of captivity by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was ever held with Betancourt.
The dual French-Colombian citizen was campaigning in Colombia's southern rebel stronghold in 2002 when she was kidnapped along with her campaign manager Clara Rojas. The last proof of life their families received was a video handed over by the FARC more than four years ago.
"We have to have faith, but how can we continue doing so if we don't have a proof of life?" said Delloye in a phone interview with Caracol radio.
The most recent news of the FARC hostages _ including three American military contractors kidnapped when their small plane crashed in 2003 _ emerged last month when policeman Jhon Frank Pinchao said he escaped from a jungle encampment in southeast Colombia.
Delloye questioned Pinchao's account that he had been held for more than three years with Betancourt.
"Pinchao could only say that she was still alive and exercising every day, but nothing more," he said. "Pinchao also said that Ingrid had given him French lessons, but he can only speak two or three words of French."
In a bid to revive a stalled prisoner swap with FARC, President Alvaro Uribe last week agreed to a request by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and released from jail Rodrigo Granda, the highest-ranked rebel official held by Colombian authorities. A further 150 other guerrillas are awaiting an early release.
As well as demanding the freedom of all their imprisoned comrades, the FARC responded that they would not consider freeing their roughly 60 hostages until the government withdraws its troops and police from a New York City-sized swath of jungle in southern Colombia, a condition which Uribe continues to reject.