27068: Hermantin(News)Captors release `Haitian Hillbilly' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Posted on Mon, Jan. 02, 2006

Miami Herald
HAITI
Captors release `Haitian Hillbilly'

A popular Haitian radio disc jockey, kidnapped last week, was released.
By CARA BUCKLEY
cbuckley@MiamiHerald.com

Alain Maximilien, the ''Haitian Hillbilly'' radio disc jockey who was kidnapped 
last week in Port-au-Prince, was released Sunday evening after being held 
hostage in a slum for four days. His friend, the American documentarian Frank 
Eaton, who had been kidnapped with him, was released Saturday afternoon.
The men were snatched together Wednesday at 8 p.m. outside Eaton's apartment in 
Petionville, a relatively upscale neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. Both were 
forced to go to what Maximilien described as a ''lair'' in the lawless 
Port-au-Prince slum of Cité Soleil, alternately bullied with guns and cajoled 
for the next few days -- as family members, friends and U.S. government 
agencies tried to negotiate their release.
The kidnappers first demanded a $2 million ransom for each man, a sum 
Maximilien's father, Leslie Maximilien, described as a ''crazy amount.'' The 
Associated Press reported the pair were freed following four separate ransom 
payments totaling more than $40,000 -- along with 10 pairs of sneakers and a 
radio.
On Thursday, two workers for the Organization of American States were kidnapped 
but returned over the weekend. What made the cases of Maximilien, 33, and 
Eaton, 30, especially worrisome was that they were sequestered for longer than 
48 hours.
Maximilien, 33, a Haitian American, and Eaton, 30, from Winston-Salem, N.C., 
were working together on a video for a Haitian musician and on their way home 
when they were abducted. Maximilien said his green Chevy truck was surrounded 
by armed men who took the wheel and drove them to Cité Soleil.
When asked why he thought he was targeted, Maximilien said, ``I would pretty 
much guarantee you it's because I'm white in a big gigantic car.''
During four days of captivity, Maximilien said his captors alternately played 
good cop, bad cop. Sometimes they feigned mock executions, pressing what turned 
out to be an empty gun to his face, the back of his head or his genitals and 
pulling the trigger.
Maximilien speaks Creole, so the kidnappers talked to him. Eaton, who had only 
arrived in the country three weeks earlier, strained to read their body 
language.
Maximilien said he spent the bulk of the time smoking, drinking water and 
''chewing my fingernails.'' Their nerves frayed, the two men could not sleep. 
Though offered showers, neither man wanted one because they didn't want to 
undergo the vulnerability of removing their clothes.
Still, for all the psychological terror endured, Maximilien said after seeing 
the captors' living conditions, he understood their motivation.
''I've got a wicked case of post-traumatic stress and a touch of Stockholm 
syndrome,'' said Maximilien.
Maximilien, who said he has no intention of leaving Haiti, plans to put 
whatever he has learned from the kidnapping -- and he is still figuring that 
out -- to good use. He plans to call into his radio show today. Eaton, 
meanwhile, plans to return to North Carolina today but hopes to fly back to 
Haiti in February.
Maximilien said he is not worried about being kidnapped again. ''I'm basically 
like a fish that got thrown back,'' he said. ``They're not going to hook me 
again. That's their policy.''