29344: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-American Kidnapped (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 18 (AP) -- A U.S. missionary was kidnapped as he
left his church in northern Haiti and later freed unharmed, his family said
early Wednesday.
   The Rev. Pritchard Adams III, a 24-year resident of Haiti, was freed
Tuesday night after two days in captivity, his father, Pritchard Adams Jr.,
said in a telephone interview from his home in Fayetteville, North
Carolina.
   Adams Jr. said he didn't know if a ransom was paid to free his son, who
left a voicemail at his parents' home saying he had been released.
   "He actually left a voicemail saying that he was free and that he was
going back home. He sounded fine," Adams Jr. said. "We don't know any of
the details."
   The 50-year-old missionary was kidnapped Sunday night in the northern
town of Cap-Haitien, U.N. police spokesman Fred Blaze said. Four men
grabbed Adams, his wife and a Haitian groundskeeper as they left Adams'
church. The kidnappers drove the three to a secluded area, released Adams'
wife and the groundskeeper and sped off with Adams.
   Before his release, Adams' mother, Lucy Adams, said the kidnappers
contacted her son's wife and demanded $80,000 for his release. They later
lowered the demand to $5,000.
   The kidnappers allowed her son to speak with his wife but insisted he
speak in Creole so they could understand, Lucy Adams said by phone from her
home in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
   Foreign missionaries have recently become prime targets for kidnappings,
which flourished in the aftermath of a February 2004 revolt that toppled
former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
   Though kidnappings are common in Haiti's violent capital of
Port-au-Prince, the crime has been rarer in the outlying provinces.
   Lucy Adams said her son went to Haiti when he was 26 and worked as a
principal of a Christian school. He later moved to Cap-Haitien to become a
missionary, running his first church out of a World War II medical tent
with holes in it.
   Today, he has more than 1,000 church members. He also runs an elementary
school and an adult literacy program.
   "He started from scratch. It certainly hasn't been easy," she said.
   She said her son had been threatened in the past but never kidnapped.