30445: (news) Chamberlain: Haitian radio host kidnapped and killed (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 23 (Reuters) - A popular Haitian radio host was
found shot and killed on Wednesday after being kidnapped in the
impoverished Caribbean nation's capital.
     Francois Latour, who hosted a daily advertising program and talk show
on radio Caraibes FM, was the second radio personality gunned down in Haiti
in the last week.
     Colleagues said he was killed in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince
shortly before dawn after being abducted at gunpoint on Tuesday evening.
     "He was killed with a bullet to the stomach after being kidnapped by
unidentified gunmen," Gerin Alexandre, news director at Caraibes FM, told
Reuters.
     The kidnappers had demanded a $100,000 ransom for Latour, but hours
later his body was found dumped on the side of a Delmas street, Alexandre
said.
     Latour's death came a week after Alix Joseph, a radio journalist and
host of a cultural show, was shot to death, execution style, in the
northern city of Gonaives.
     Joseph, the eighth reporter killed in Haiti since 2000, was shot 11
times.
     His killer has not been identified but armed gangs have been blamed
for a recent escalation of violence in Gonaives and other parts of northern
Haiti.
     Politically motivated violence has eased since President Rene Preval
took office a year ago, but poverty, joblessness and the drug trade
continue to fuel widespread crime in the poorest country in the Western
Hemisphere.