Bogota, Colombia ? The mother of one of three American military contractors kidnapped by leftist rebels in 2003 said Thursday she was heartbroken to learn from an escaped captive that her son is suffering from hepatitis deep in the Amazon jungle.

“I knew in my heart he was alive, but I didn’t know he was sick,” said Jo Rosano, mother of Marc Gonsalves, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from her home in Bristol, Conn.

Rosano said she felt “dead inside” when police office Jhon Frank Pinchao told journalists on Wednesday that her son had hepatitis. Pinchao said he fled from the same jungle camp where the Americans and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt were being held.

Pinchao said he last saw the high-profile hostages on April 28, the day he took advantage of torrential rains to escape the jungle camp where he was being held after eight years in captivity. He survived 17 days in the jungle and was found Wednesday by an anti-narcotics police patrol.

He said Gonsalves was suffering from hepatitis, but not did not provide any more details about the man’s condition or that of 11 other hostages held with him, among them a kidnapped senator and other police officers.

There are several forms of hepatitis, a disease of the liver that can cause abdominal pain, extreme fatigue and jaundice, and in severe cases death.

Pinchao’s account is the first direct confirmation the Americans remain alive since August 2003, when Rosano received a “proof of life” video several months after Gonsalves and two colleagues, Tom Howes and Keith Stansell, were captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The three Northrop Grumman Corp. contractors were on a drug surveillance mission in Colombia’s cocaine-producing southern jungle when their plane crashed on Feb. 13, 2003.

Betancourt, a congresswoman who denounced corruption, was kidnapped on Feb. 23, 2002, while campaigning for president in the south. A dual French-Colombian citizen, she has become a cause celebre in Europe.