[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

24552: Hermantin (News) Family works for release of former Boca resident captive in Haiti

Family works for release of former Boca resident captive in Haiti
By Tal Abbady
Staff Writer

March 23, 2005

A former Boca Raton man kidnapped in Haiti last week remains in the custody
of armed captors as his family works to negotiate his release, friends and
family said Tuesday.

Gunmen abducted Karl Delafuente, 22, a U.S. citizen and former Florida
Atlantic University student, in the northern city of Cap Haitien on March 15
as his car approached a roadblock, according to family and a missionary aid
group close to the Delafuentes. His mother, Elizabeth Delafuente, and wife,
Mary Smelko, were left in the car unharmed.

Political strife and street violence, which have have wracked Haiti for
years, have intensified in the year since an armed rebellion led to the
U.S.-assisted ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Delafuente family has refused help from the FBI and the State
Department, according to Jason Kello, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Mark Foley,
R-Palm Beach Gardens. Foley has long tracked events in Haiti and their
reverberations in South Florida's large Haitian exile community.

A woman who answered the phone at the Delafuente home in Cap Haitien would
not comment.

The family is trying to meet the kidnappers' demand for a ransom, said Patsy
Smelko, sister-in-law of Mary Smelko. She did not know the amount of the
ransom demand. Karl Delafuente worked in road construction for a private
contractor, Smelko said.

"He's very fun loving and easy going. He went back down there to hang out
with his parents and help improve Haiti's roads," Smelko, who lives in
Durham, N.C., said.

Delafuente has not been harmed and his family is confident he will be
released, she said. "He's their only son. I'm sure they will come up with
whatever money is necessary," Smelko said. "They are strong in their faith."

She and other associates did not know whether Delafuente had been targeted
or simply fell into the path of one of many armed gangs that roam the
fractured country's streets and disrupt civilian life.

Karl Delafuente was born in Haiti and attended high school in Orlando. He
enrolled at FAU in the spring of 2004 but did not complete the term,
university officials said. His wife graduated from FAU with a degree in
educational leadership, and friends said she planned to teach in Haiti.

Delafuente is the son of Edouard Delafuente, a Haitian businessman,
according to Dick Snook, head of Missionary Flights International in West
Palm Beach and a longtime friend of the Delafuente family. Delafuente's
mother, Snook said, teaches at the Cowman School for missionary children in
Cap Haitien, where the family has strong ties to the U.S. missionary
community.

Delafuente and Mary Smelko were married a year ago and moved to Cap Haitien
in January, said Snook, whose organization flies supplies to 700 missionary
families in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Over the years, Karl
Delafuente often flew to and from Haiti on Snook's planes, bringing supplies
to his mother and other missionaries.

"We're really stressed by this," Snook said. "The people in the missions and
their families are very close to us. We've seen their kids grow up. We're
their link. All we can do is stand by and pray."

Kidnappings like that of Delafuente underscore the rampant crime and
instability that persist in Haiti since Aristide's ouster, analysts say.

"There's no real rule of law in large swaths of the country," said Dan
Erikson, a Caribbean-affairs expert at Inter-American Dialogue in
Washington, D.C. He said Haiti's northern half, where Cap Haitien is
situated, is "a legal no-man's land," where U.N. officials and Haitian
police have ceded control to gangs and militias, sparking criticism against
interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue. Erikson said instances of
Latin-American style kidnappings, while still rare, have increased in the
past year, though exact figures are difficult to come by. The gangs are
responsible for 400 civilian deaths since September and threaten to disrupt
elections scheduled for the fall.

The State Department has a travel advisory warning U.S. citizens about the
dangers of traveling to Haiti, which include "violent confrontations between
armed groups," "the absence of an effective police force" and "intermittent
road blocks set by armed gangs."

U.N. peacekeepers appeared to be stepping up their efforts against the gangs
in clashes that left two peacekeepers dead Sunday in Terre-Rouge. "There's a
lot of insecurity with people going out into the street and getting hijacked
in their cars," said Glenn Stinson, an American environmentalist who has
lived in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince since 1989, speaking by
telephone from her home. "People are disillusioned with the current
situation."

Information from The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.

Tal Abbady can be reached at tabbady@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6624.


Copyright © 2005, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
sak