27016: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Kidnappings (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

   By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Dec 26 (AP) -- Quesnel Durosier walked out of a bank
with $3,500 tucked into his sock, buoyed by thoughts of his upcoming
wedding. Seconds later, a car cut him off, gunmen sprang out and shoved him
into the car along with a woman passer-by.
   What followed was a nightmare of torture and death threats for these
latest victims of a wave of attacks that has made impoverished Haiti the
kidnapping capital of the Americas.
   Everyone is a target -- schoolchildren, foreign aid workers and
pedestrians in the upscale and heavily guarded Petionville district of the
capital, where Durosier and the unidentified woman were snatched.
   Tourists are not targeted, but only because they are virtually
nonexistent.
   Police and an 8,860-strong U.N. peacekeeping force have pledged to
restore security, which evaporated after the February 2004 rebellion that
toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But kidnappings have skyrocketed,
and as Jan. 8 presidential and parliamentary elections approach, stemming
the kidnappings is an "absolute priority," said Damian Onses-Cardona, the
U.N. spokesman in Haiti.
   The peacekeepers have been trying for months to penetrate the vast Cite
Soleil slum, where gangs stash many of their hostages. A Canadian
peacekeeper was shot dead near Cite Soleil in an apparent kidnap attempt
five days before Christmas.
   Thirty kidnappings were reported in Haiti in November, and 30 during the
first week of December alone, said police spokesman Frantz Lerebours. The
actual number is probably much higher because many families prefer to
negotiate with kidnappers rather than notify police.
   Recent victims include 14 schoolchildren abducted on their school bus in
December, and Emmanuel Cantave, a prominent leader of Aristide's Lavalas
Family party. Another was Phillip Snyder, an American missionary shot in an
ambush and seized along with a Haitian boy he was taking to Michigan for
eye surgery. All were eventually released after ransoms were paid.
   Eight to 10 people are abducted every day in this Caribbean nation of 8
million, more than any other country in the Americas, said Judy Orihuela,
an FBI spokeswoman in Miami. That surpasses even Colombia, which for years
has had the world's highest kidnapping rate.
   Since April, 28 U.S. citizens have been reported kidnapped in Haiti,
Orihuela said.
   "In the last year or so, it's just exploded down there," Dick Hildreth,
a security consultant, said in a telephone interview from his office at
Corporate Risk International in Fairfax, Va. The company advises its
clients to hire bodyguards while visiting Haiti, or avoid it altogether.
   A South Korean factory manager was recently kidnapped, held in Cite
Soleil and released for $10,000.
   Some freed victims have said that what they heard while being held
captive suggest the kidnappings may be connected, at least loosely, to the
election and to U.N. efforts to gain control of Cite Soleil, where 200,000
people live in squalor. It is a stronghold of armed gangs, allegedly close
to Aristide, which are threatening to disrupt the elections.
   Michael Lucius, chief of the Haitian Judiciary Police, said he doubts
politics are involved.
   "This is purely criminal activity. Gangs are raising cash to spend
during the holiday season," he said.
   All Durosier knows is that his abductors wanted money.
   Forced to crouch in his seat and choking from a plastic bag placed over
his head, he was brought to a house outside Port-au-Prince and tied to a
chair. The kidnappers quickly found his wedding savings.
   Durosier could hear the woman scream in another room as the kidnappers
poured hot water onto her to make her say who could pay her ransom. The two
hostages never got a chance to talk to each other, and the woman's identity
and fate remain unknown.
   Durosier, a journalist for the newspaper Le Matin and an occasional AP
contributor, said that after a few hours of questioning and threats, his
abductors appeared satisfied with the cash they had stolen from him, and
released him in the countryside.
   "I still wonder what happened to the woman I was held with," Durosier
said.
   ------
   Associated Press writer Ben Fox in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to
this report.