Colombian tried to escape rebels with Betancourt

By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A Colombian woman freed by rebels after nearly six years in captivity said on Friday she tried to escape with her friend, French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, and their captors used jungle snakes to punish them.

The nighttime escape plan crumbled when they got lost in the darkness. They blamed each other and fell out over the failed attempt while the guerrillas disciplined them by throwing snakes, tarantulas and even a dead tiger into their bunks.

The episode recounted by the 44-year-old Clara Rojas is one of many harrowing experiences she described having during her captivity. The Marxist guerrillas handed her and another hostage over to the left-wing government of neighbouring Venezuela on Thursday.

"We could not leave the area around our camp because we could not find our way in the darkness, so we failed," Rojas told Colombian radio from the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, where she is undergoing medical checks before returning to Colombia.

The rebels hold hundreds of hostages for ransom and political leverage as part of their four-decade-old war against the state, which has been fuelled over the past 20 years by Colombia's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade.

When they were taken in February 2002, Rojas was running for vice president on the same ticket as presidential candidate Betancourt, who is still in captivity.

Rojas said she made up with Betancourt after the dispute over their failed escape, and she was the first person Rojas told when she got pregnant by one of her guerrilla captors in 2003.

When she gets back to Colombia, Rojas said she will head straight for her 3-year-old son, Emmanuel, who has been living in a Bogota foster home, and give him a long overdue hug.