27056: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Kidnappings (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

   By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 1 (AP) -- Two kidnapped American journalists who
said their captors threatened to kill them were freed over the weekend
after friends and family assembled a ransom for their release.
   "I'm overjoyed to be out. These were the worst four days of my life,"
the New York-born radio broadcaster Alain Maximilien, 33, said after his
release Sunday. Frank Eaton, a budding freelance documentary filmmaker from
Winston-Salem, N.C., was released on Saturday.
   Gunmen kidnapped the two on Wednesday in Petionville, an upscale suburb
of the capital, and took them to Cite Soleil, a sprawling slum on the
outskirts of Port-au-Prince and a base for armed gangs blamed for much of
the violence in the capital.
   "I'm incredibly relieved we both made it out of there," said Eaton upon
hearing of the release of his friend. Eaton, 30, said he intended to return
to his family in the United States on Monday.
   "This ordeal does not change my feelings for Haiti, and I will be back
soon to report the situation here," Eaton said.
   Maximilien, whose father is Haitian and whose mother is American, plays
music intertwined with interviews and social and news commentary on his
show on the local Radio 1 station.
   The two said they were freed after a total of over $40,000 in ransom,
along with 10 pairs of sneakers and a radio, were handed during the
three-day long negotiation, the victims said. Some of the ransom was
apparently stolen en route and did not make it to the kidnappers.
   They said they were allowed to keep their cell phones and that the
kidnappers made sure they had sufficient battery power so they could call
contacts to hasten payment of a ransom.
   Maximilien and Eaton said their captors did not harm them, but
repeatedly threatened to kill them during negotiations, once pointing
unloaded guns at the hostages and pulling the triggers.
   A wave of kidnappings has hit the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation,
where criminal gangs are flourishing in the aftermath of the rebellion that
toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.