Kidnapped: Colombian Politician Ingrid Betancourt

Ingrid Betancourt's apartment clings to the side of a mountain in an upmarket suburb of Bogotá. The huge windows of the large, elegant sitting room seem to hang over the city spread out below. Everywhere there are signs of family life: photographs of two young children hugging their mother; a piano, bought for a daughter's lessons; black-and-white pictures of older generations in formal dress, snapshots of weddings and family occasions; an 11-year-old golden retriever snuffling from her rug in the corner. The room speaks of a prosperous middle-class family life.

There is nothing to tell you that the two smiling children in the silver frames are now teenagers, and that when they were 10 and seven they had to be rushed out of the country after a death threat and have been in New Zealand ever since. Or that, since February 23 2002, the attractive young woman in the huge photograph that leans against the wall has been held captive somewhere in the jungle, a prisoner of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the country's largest and toughest guerrilla army.

Juan Carlos le Compte, an advertising executive and Betancourt's second husband, clatters down a spiral staircase, unshaven and dark-eyed. For two years he has campaigned for the release of his 42-year-old wife, accepted prizes on her behalf, lobbied governments, made public appeals, organised demonstrations and fought the depression that is never far from his shoulder. Now he seems like a man at the limit of his emotional resilience.

"I have come to the conclusion," he says, "that I will not see Ingrid again as long as Alvaro Uribe is president. If Ingrid had been kidnapped under any other president, she would have been free. Uribe does not believe in negotiating with the Farc. He sees it as a sign of weakness. He thinks you can get rid of all opposition by violence."

"Ingrid," he adds, "is opposition too."

Betancourt certainly is opposition. Her father was a distinguished Colombian diplomat, her mother a philanthropist and congresswoman. Betancourt herself erupted on to the Colombian political scene in 1994, when, frustrated with drawing up reform programmes for corrupt and ineffectual politicians, she decided to stand for congress herself. With no money and no political track record, Betancourt struggled for attention until she adopted a characteristically bold campaigning idea. The Aids epidemic was spreading, and Betancourt drew a parallel between Aids and the corruption that was eating away at Colombian democracy. She began to hand out condoms on the street with the slogan "protection against corruption". Her father was appalled, but Ingrid was elected.

Once in Congress, she led a public fight against the then president, Ernesto Samper, and exposed the contributions that Colombia's drug cartels had made to his presidential campaign funds. She became a heroine to the tens of thousands of Colombians who had begun to despair of their political class.

All this came at a price. The most painful cost was the sacrifice of her family life. In December 1996, she was told that a contract had been taken out on her and her children. The next day she flew to New Zealand to leave the children with their father, a French diplomat and Betancourt's first husband. She has not lived with them since.

After being elected to the senate in 1998, with the highest personal vote in the country, she ran for president in 2000. The election took place against the backdrop of increasing tensions with the Farc. The president, Andres Pastrana, had agreed a ceasefire and ceded control of 70,000 square miles of territory to the Farc in order for peace talks to take place. But on the eve of the election the Farc hijacked a plane and took five congressman hostage. Pastrana broke off contact and ordered the army to reoccupy the guerrilla zone. It was an area in which Betancourt had political connections: the mayor of the nearby town of San Vicente del Caguan belonged to her party. After hearing reports that paramilitary forces were moving in and the killings had begun, Betancourt honoured her promise not to abandon the people of San Vicente and went there herself. "The security forces told her not to go," Le Compte recalls. "They didn't want anyone to see what they were doing. She went there to keep her word."

Many saw the gesture as foolhardy. "I was afraid of many things for Ingrid, but not kidnapping," says Le Compte. Two weeks before, he says, Betancourt and other presidential candidates had had a cordial meeting with the Farc. They had even teased Betancourt about her new campaign slogan, "Viagra for Colombia".

But this time the reception was less cordial. Betancourt, travelling in an armoured jeep with her campaign manager, Clara Rojas, her driver and two journalists, was stopped by a Farc group on their two-hour drive between the airport at Florencia and San Vicente. The journalists and the driver were released. Betancourt and Rojas were taken hostage.

"I wrote an article explaining to the Farc that this kidnapping was a political mistake because she was fighting the establishment, just as they were," says Le Compte. It was the same enemy, she just used different political methods. But it was impossible. I went to the jails and spoke to the Farc leaders. It was like talking to a stone. Just like talking to the government. We are between two stones who have hated each other for 40 years. They are both deaf and they are both in love with war."

For five months, Le Compte had no news of his wife. Then the Farc released a video in which she appeared thin and drawn, but alive. Another 13 months went by in silence. "There were strong rumours that she was dead," says Le Compte. "That was a terrible time." Then came another video. "I saw her very strong, very valiant," he says. "Her political position morally and ethically intact. She was generous, asking for peace not for herself. It gave me strength to continue to fight for all the hostages, not just for Ingrid."

The Farc are currently holding around 3,000 hostages - some taken in military encounters; others abducted for money; others, like Betancourt, high-profile personalities who might be used to force a humanitarian exchange for the 400 Farc prisoners held in Colombian jails.

"Some of the police have been held for seven years," says Le Compte. "They were taken prisoner doing their duty, and they have been abandoned by the state."

Le Compte says he does not know where Betancourt is being held. "It's better not to," he says. "If it was known, the army might try to rescue her and she would certainly be killed. The Farc see them coming. They disappear, but they kill the hostages." The government claims that there have been some successful rescues but these, according to Le Compte, are of hostages kidnapped for money.

"It's very long," he says. "Very hard. Even if we had some communication - a letter a month - it would be bearable. I asked the Farc for that, but they said it was too dangerous. They say this is an irregular war. There are no rules, everything is valid."

In July last year, there was a glimmer of hope. "One afternoon," Le Compte explains, "Uribe rang Ingrid's mother and said that a Farc informer had reported that Ingrid was very ill and might die so they were going to release her at the mouth of the river Putumayo on the frontier of Brazil. He said we should go there and wait for her. I didn't really believe it, but of course I had to go."

Betancourt has French nationality through her first marriage and is well known in France. When her autobiography, Storm in my Heart, became a bestseller, she was described as a latter-day Joan of Arc. Betancourt was a friend of the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin - he had taught her at university in Paris 20 years earlier. Her sister now turned to him for help. De Villepin dispatched a Hercules C130 hospital plane to the closest airport at Manaus in Brazil. But he failed to consult either the Brazilian or the Colombian authorities. Aboard the plane were De Villepin's adviser on Latin America, Pierre-Henri Guignard, and a detachment of French special forces, apparently engaged in a misguided and unauthorised rescue attempt. Guignard and three of the team, now under close observation by the Brazilian police, then chartered a small plane to take them to a landing strip near the border. But the pilot - not knowing what was going on - panicked and contacted the Brazilian police himself.

In the jungle across the river, Le Compte was waiting with a priest who had been instructed to act as intermediary. "There was nothing there. Nothing," he says. "The priest kept saying that I had to have faith, but I am beyond praying."

The affair descended into a diplomatic fiasco. Back in Paris, the scandal had leaked and De Villepin was fending off suggestions by Brazilian officials that the French government had been prepared to exchange Betancourt for weapons for the Farc. De Villepin denied he had ordered anything other than a humanitarian mission and the French government has maintained silence ever since.

After 11 days of agonised waiting, Le Compte was helicoptered out. "I looked down at the jungle," he says. "They could be anywhere. It's hopeless trying to find them."

This weekend, supporters of Betancourt will gather in Bogotá to commemorate the second anniversary of her kidnapping. They plan to paint white stars on the pavement, one for Betancourt and one for Rojas. "It's something all the families of all the hostages can do, all over Colombia," says Le Compte. "The idea is that they can rub them out when they are released." It is a gesture that has powerful emotional resonance, but little political backing. "If there were 3,000 hostages in Germany," says Le Compte, "it would be the government's biggest problem. But here the hostages are just not mentioned. Uribe only cares that Bush is sending him money for his war. He's happy. Bush is happy. I am very depressed. There is so little hope."