21009: Burnham: Globe and Mail: Abductions on the rise in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: thor burnham <thorald_mb@hotmail.com>

Abductions on the rise in Haiti as poor grow desperate
Current crimes called 'fast-food kidnapping'; abductors 'are after whatever
they can get,' writes MARINA JIMENEZ

By MARINA JIMENEZ
Thursday, April 1, 2004 - Page A3

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Natacha Cassis, a businesswoman from a prominent Haitian
family, was thinking only of her five-year-old son as she rushed to pick him
up at his posh private school. At the entrance, several young hooligans
grabbed her and dragged her to her car. "Take it," she said, handing over
the keys to her jeep.

It was only when they stuffed her in the back seat and sped off that Ms.
Cassis realized she had been abducted by a jittery, excitable group of
kidnappers who turned out to be rank amateurs.

They called her every profane name in the book and debated aloud about
whether they should rape her. She was driven to Cité Soleil, an infamous
Port-au-Prince slum, where one of her abductors mistakenly fired his gun, a
rudimentary, homemade weapon.

"I told them, if I die, you get nothing. You have to do this right. You have
to have a plan," said Ms. Cassis, 30, recalling how she took control of the
situation. "You need a drop-off spot," she told them, as she used her own
cellphone -- theirs had run out of credit -- to call her family and
negotiate a ransom.

Kidnapping used to be a relatively rare crime in Haiti, but it is fast
becoming a common way of raising capital in a country with income
disparities as legendary as its culture of chaos and violence. With the
country still struggling to recover from the armed uprising that led to the
ouster of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, armed partisans are
becoming increasingly desperate for cash.

Although Ms. Cassis was kidnapped several months ago, her captors' modus
operandi has become increasingly common: Kidnap a person at random, demand
wildly inflated ransoms of up to $1-million (U.S.), then negotiate a
settlement of as little as $10,000.

Two weeks ago, Anna Cianculle, a grandmother from an old land-owning family,
was kidnapped just as she was coming out of church in her Sunday best. She
was released four days later after her family paid an undisclosed sum. The
same day, the wife of a well-known hotel owner was also kidnapped.

Under Mr. Aristide, corrupt police and gang members linked to the deposed
leader were also involved in the kidnapping industry. They would target
specific members of wealthy families in retaliation for political slights.
But the current incidents are what security experts call "fast-food
kidnapping" or "kidnapping lite."

"People are after whatever they can get," said Didier Hudicourt, head of
SOPOTEL Security in Port-au-Prince. "They take any one and the ransoms vary.
There is a lot of negotiating and these people don't really know what the
person they kidnap is worth."

In a country without even an official census, it is impossible to obtain
reliable statistics on kidnapping. But there are several high-profile
victims every week, according to newly appointed national police chief Leon
Charles, and countless other minor incidents involving extortion and
ransoms.

"It used to be that we had political kidnappings to terrorize the rich. But
now people just want money," Mr. Charles said. "A lot of the cases now are
chimères [pro-Aristide gangs] and sometimes police officers are involved.
That is the worst part."

Ms. Cassis negotiated with her family to drop off as much U.S. cash as they
could gather -- they raised $20,000 -- then persuaded the gang leader to
stay with her in the car while several underlings were dispatched to the
drop-off point.

Over the course of five long hours, the leader told Ms. Cassis his story. He
said how he had been trained in computers, but couldn't find a job. He
needed to buy weapons to protect himself. His gang became entangled with Mr.
Aristide, who at first paid and armed them, but eventually betrayed them.
The ex-president's divide-and-conquer tactics produced a web of rival gangs
in the slums.

Initially, Ms. Cassis was so terrified that her body was trembling, but as
the evening wore on, a kind of Stockholm syndrome set in.

After her family paid the ransom, the leader left her with two underlings,
who promised to drop her on a nearby road. In the process, the underlings
realized they were being followed and jumped out of the car.

In the other vehicle were Ms. Cassis's cousins, who had been sent into the
night with semi-automatic weapons to rescue her. She hid during the gunfight
that ensued, leaving her two captors dead -- a common enough end result for
kidnappers.

Ms. Cassis's story illustrates the terror felt by Haiti's wealthy elite.
They live high in the hills over the capital in guarded compounds with pools
and tennis courts, while most of their compatriots eke out their existence
in the fetid slums below.

But Ms. Cassis says the country's elites must take a measure of
responsibility for the situation. Many opt out of the public system
altogether, avoiding taxes while they finance a parallel private system that
relies on bodyguards, expensive jeeps and generators. She doesn't condone
violence, but she does understand her kidnappers' motives.

"These boys are cornered and it is their fate. The system is a dead end for
them -- no wonder they turn to guns," she said. "But there is no Kidnappers
Anonymous. How will they ever be reintegrated into civil society now that
Aristide is gone?"

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