Hostages cite intolerable conditions

SAN ANTONIO, July 11 (UPI) -- The three American contractors rescued from the Colombian jungle cited gruesome living conditions but found missing their families hardest to take.

Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes kept small items as reminders of the 5 1/2 years they spent away from their families, cut off from the world outside of the jungle, seeing only fellow hostages and their captors, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, CNN reported.

Stansell described his captors as "animals."

"They don't recognize humanity, they don't recognize human rights," he said.

The men described months in which they were ordered not to speak to each other, living in intolerable conditions, forced to march in chains.

Thoughts of home and family sustained them, they said.

In a CNN interview in San Antonio, Texas, Stansell showed off a heavy industrial lock which secured chains around their necks at night. Gonsalves displayed small wooden chess pawns he had carved out of wood with a broken piece of a machete enabling them to play chess though chained. Howes carried a bullet from a commander who had threatened to kill him.

FARC had held the trio captive since February 2003 after their plane crashed in a remote region of the South American country. They were among 15 hostages rescued last week in a surprise Colombian military operation.