27364: (news) Chamberlain: Three French nationals freed after kidnap in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     PARIS, Jan 28 (Reuters) - An 84-year-old nun and two other French
citizens kidnapped in Haiti have been released, the French Foreign Ministry
said on Saturday.
     The three were abducted at gunpoint on Tuesday on a notoriously
dangerous road near Cite Soleil, a shantytown on the north side of
Port-au-Prince, police said. They were in Haiti on a humanitarian mission.
     "We confirm that the three French nationals abducted in Port-au-Prince
have been freed and are safe," an official at the French Foreign Ministry
said. "They are at the embassy."
     Kidnapping for ransom is part of a plague of violence engulfing the
poor Caribbean nation as it edges closer to its first election since former
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from office in February 2004.
The vote is set for Feb. 7.
     More than 1,900 people have been kidnapped in Port-au-Prince in the
last 10 months, police sources say.
     Police said the abductors of the French missionaries demanded a
ransom. But the Foreign Ministry official declined to comment when asked if
a ransom was paid.