HIS name is Emmanuel and the story of his birth in captivity in the Amazon jungle, where his mother has been held a prisoner of Marxist guerrillas for the past five years, is fuelling anger in Colombia at the inhumanity of war.

Colombia’s alphabet soup of guerrilla factions has long made an industry out of kidnapping. Never before, however, have the gunmen sunk to such depths: Emmanuel, according to an escaped prisoner, is a three-year-old boy being raised in the wild by rebels who keep him apart from his mother.

She is Clara Rojas, a 44-year-old lawyer who was kidnapped five years ago with Ingrid Betancourt, her friend, a green presidential candidate whose campaign she was managing.

The plight of Betancourt, who has French citizenship and whose portrait hangs in the Paris town hall, has attracted world-wide attention and was even a topic of discussion at the G8 summit in Germany. By contrast, the ordeal of Rojas and the baby she had with a rebel fighter is only now beginning to emerge.

The story told by an emaciated police officer who spent 17 days walking through the jungle after escaping from a guerrilla camp near the Brazilian border has shaken a country hardened to the horrors of a seemingly interminable civil war.

“Clara suffered so much,” said Jhon Pinchao, who spent eight years as a prisoner of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which has been battling a succession of governments since the 1960s. “I could hear her asking to see her son.”

Pinchao claimed to have once held Emmanuel in his arms. He said the child was being brought up as “an Indian boy is treated” and was in good health. Prisoners had stitched together clothes for him. His mother would occasionally be allowed to see him. But he added: “The guerrillas are in charge of the child.” The relationship between Rojas and the boy’s father was not clear but the iron-disciplined Farc - it is often described as a Latin American Khmer Rouge - prohibits intimacy between its combatants and prisoners.

“We do not know if rape was involved,” said Olga Lucia Gomez, director of a group that counsels kidnap victims. “One certainty is that a woman in captivity is absolutely vulnerable.” Although nobody has seen a photograph of him, Emmanuel has become a celebrity, a national symbol of the hostages’ suffering. If the boy died, said Hector Abad Faciolince, one of the country’s most prominent novelists, “we will be the most savage country on earth, the dirtiest, the worst”.

President Alvaro Uribe has called for an international campaign to put pressure on the Farc to release Emmanuel and 50 other “political” hostages held by the rebels, including three American military contractors.

The government, responding to pressure from Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, who promised in his recent election victory speech not to abandon Betancourt, has been releasing some 250 jailed guerrillas in a gesture of goodwill, including a Farc leader and a rebel woman who has been raising a two-year-old in prison.

“It is a message to the Farc to give us Emmanuel,” said Carlos Holguin, the interior minister.

Suspecting a government ruse to rescue the hostages, the rebels have been insisting on the “demilitarisation” of two towns near their stronghold before negotiations can begin. Sarkozy, meanwhile, has demanded proof that Betancourt is alive.

“It’s been four years and one month since we have had any proof that Ingrid is alive,” said Fabrice Delloye, her former husband and father of Melanie and Lorenzo, their two children. He was referring to a video of Betancourt and Rojas sent to Colom-bian media in 2003.

The family discussed their strategy with Sarkozy and have decided to send emissaries to the guerrillas with questions only Betancourt could answer. “The correct answers would be proof that she is alive,” said Delloye.

French caution is understandable: a previous attempt at mediation by Paris ended in humiliation in 2003, when members of a crack French negotiating team were arrested by Brazilian police in an Amazon port on suspicion of being drug traffickers.

Pinchao, the escaped policeman, insisted that Betancourt and Rojas were alive. His description of conditions in captivity has intensified indignation about the plight of the hostages. Betancourt, he said, tried to flee several times and was “punished” after each attempt. She now slept with her neck chained to a tree.

At the same time, he said, she had recovered from hepatitis and was able to keep fit through exercise. Yolanda, Betancourt’s mother, was also thrilled to hear that the hostages were allowed to listen to the radio. She chats to her daughter through a radio programme each day for the “prisoners of the forest”, as the estimated 3,000 hostages held by guerrillas are known. “I give her news of the family,” said Yolanda. “I tell her about events in Colombia and the world.”

She often dreams of her daughter’s freedom. “I always see the same thing, her running towards us, smiling, hugging her two children. I would not wish any mother to endure what I endure.”

As for Rojas’s mother, who is also called Clara, gifts of cuddly toys for Emmanuel have begun arriving at her home.

“I looked up Emmanuel in the Bible,” she said recently, convinced that her daughter was using the name to send a message to the outside world. “It means God is with us.”

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