By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA, July 5 (Reuters) - The radio messages crackle over Colombia's airwaves every Sunday before dawn like invisible lifelines to husbands, mothers and brothers trapped for as long as nine years in sweltering guerrilla prison camps.

Colombia's hostage drama unfolds as "Voices of the Kidnapped" sends haunting messages from families of politicians, police and soldiers held by rebels or snatched by armed gangs during the darker days of the conflict.

Calls flood into a small Bogota studio relating details of birthdays and school prizes, of poems and greetings. They represent a slice of everyday life that families hope will reach hostages in Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency.

"My father was taken 13 years ago, I have no idea where he is. All I want to say Dad is I love you, we are with you, and we want you back," Wilhem Muller said during a telephone call to the program on Sunday.

The international spotlight fell again on the often forgotten plight of Colombia's hostages with the recent killing of 11 local politicians kidnapped five years ago by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The news shocked Colombia and drew outrage from Washington to Paris, where governments are pressing for the FARC to free French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, taken in 2002, and three U.S. contract workers snatched a year later.

President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-financed campaign has reduced violence. However, the fate of hundreds of hostages hangs in the balance as the government and guerrillas are deadlocked over rebel demands for a demilitarized safe zone before any talks. Uribe says that is unacceptable.

The radio messages are often the only outreach for families as they wait for years for a trickle of news or occasional videos made by their loved ones and released by their captors.

"My husband was taken when he was 42 and two weeks ago he turned 50," said Maria Teresa Mendieta, whose police colonel husband was taken in a FARC attack. "Every day is tough for the kidnap families because we live a constant torture."

HOSTAGE TO HOST

The government says the FARC has kidnapped more than 6,500 people over the last decade and 740 remain in the hands of the guerrillas. Some have been held in barbed wire camps; others chained to stop them fleeing.

Herbin Hoyos, director of the radio program, was himself a kidnap victim held for 17 days by the FARC six years ago.

"When we were at the camp, another hostage was tied to a tree and he had a tiny radio in his hand. You could see that was his only contact with the outside world," Hoyos said.

In the most recent video released by the FARC this week, one hostage thanked the radio broadcasts for giving him contact with his family as he marked nearly a decade in captivity.

The hostage stories reflect years of suffering. Clara Rojas, kidnapped with Betancourt, had a child in captivity. Her son Emmanuel is about 3 years old and has never known freedom.

The FARC took the wife and two sons of one senator. The boys were later released, but rebels killed the senator as he paid a ransom to free his wife, who remains in captivity.

Families are pressing for a hostage deal but for some, it is already too late.

"I missed giving him another child we planned," Fabiola Perdomo, wife of one of the murdered politicians, told El Pais newspaper in Cali. "I missed giving him a last kiss on that last day, because I didn't get up to say good bye."

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