The husband of kidnapped former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt dropped thousands of photographs of her children from a light plane over mountains and jungles Friday in the hope she would see them.

Betancourt's husband Juan Carlos Lecompte organized the air-drop over southern Colombia where he believes his wife is held prisoner so she could see how her children had grown since Marxist rebels kidnapped her in February 2002.

He printed 5,000 pictures of her daughter Melanie, 19, and her son Lorenzo, 16, hugging and smiling. Lorenzo is holding a guitar and above them appear the words "For Ingrid Betancourt from Juan Carlos".

"Ingrid has the right to see her children, and to see me. But as that isn't possible, I want to send her recent photos of her kids," said Lecompte, who is the children's stepfather.

"I'm sure she'll be really happy to see how much they've grown," Lecompte told Reuters.

He took off in a Cessna light aircraft piloted by a friend from the southern city of Neiva to scatter the pictures over nearby mountains and jungles with a heavy presence of rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC.

The rebels want to swap Betancourt and 62 other hostages, including politicians, soldiers and three American defense contractors, for thousands of FARC guerrillas held in government jails.

They are holding their hostages in jungle camps.

But a deal looks unlikely for now and the Colombian government last year extradited a top FARC commander to the United States after the rebels refused an ultimatum to free their hostages.

Betancourt was abducted by the FARC after ignoring army warnings not to try to campaign for president for her small left-wing party in a rebel-held area of southern Colombia. She won 0.5 percent of the vote in the election, which took place three months after she was kidnapped.

Melanie and Lorenzo live in France with their father, Betancourt's first husband. Betancourt, who has dual Colombia-French nationality, has become a national hero in France.

The FARC also kidnap hundreds of people a year for ransom and not political purposes.