25004: (news) Chamberlain: Two foreigners held as kidnappings rise in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 5 (Reuters) - A Russian and an Indian have
been kidnapped in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, which has seen a
surge of abductions for ransom in the past few months, U.N. officials said
on Thursday.
     "The Russian is a U.N. contractor who works with a civil aviation
company, but not a member of the U.N. peacekeeping mission," a spokesman
for the U.N. mission in Haiti, Damian Onses-Cardona, told Reuters.
     He said the two were kidnapped during the weekend. Sources said the
captors asked for $200,000 in exchange for the Russian's release, but
little was known about the Indian citizen.
     They are the first two known cases in which foreigners were targeted
by kidnappers since kidnappings and criminal violence surged dramatically
after a Feb. 19 jailbreak during which nearly 500 prisoners escaped,
including many dangerous criminals. Only a few dozen have surrendered or
been recaptured by police.
     The kidnap victims are mostly business people and professionals. One
political leader was held last week and was released after his entourage
paid a ransom.
     During an Inter-American Dialogue meeting last month in Washington,
the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, Juan Gabriel Valdes, said the surge in
kidnappings could be the work of drug dealers who face increasing
difficulty conducting their trade and want an alternate way to make fast
money.
     Political and gang violence has killed 678 people, including 20
policemen, since September. Most of the victims lived in slum strongholds
of support for former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who fled the
country in February 2004, amid an armed revolt and under U.S. and French
pressure to quit. He lives in South Africa.