Question about Kidnapping.

utopiacowboy says on Nov 21, 2005, 22:26:

This came up when we were discussing lasvocesdelsecuestro. I have to think a lot of them are dead or disappeared and no one's ever going to find out what happened to them. To have thousands of prisoners with all the attendant business of guarding them, feeding them, clothing them, housing them etc. would just be more trouble than it was worth. I think the only ones they have left are the high value people. The two people that my wife knows that were kidnapped were freed after a few weeks for a ransom payment. I have been wanting her to take a look at that site to see if the people she knows are listed but she hasn't had time.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

platano says on Nov 21, 2005, 23:03:

Algunos de los secuestrados de las AUC terminan muertos... Por ejemplo, algunos de los académicos han sido amenazados, secuestrados, o asesinatos por las AUC:Base de Datos de Violaciónes de Derechos Humanos en la Comunidad Universitaria en Colombia

plátano

Toby says on Nov 22, 2005, 07:39:

The FARC hold two types of kidnap victims - potentially hundreds who are kidnapped in order to raise money. Typically these are businessmen, wealthy farmers, but not nationally important people.

The second group of people are those you refer to, the 60 or so. These people are not being held for money, but only to force the government to release FARC rebels in prison. These are nationally (and internationally) important people, such as Ingrid Betancourt, former ministers and the three American defence contractors.

In negotiations, the FARC have always kept the two groups separate, while the government when it has offered its plans for an exchange has always tried to get the FARC to release all of those kidnapped.

The problems we had here was that before the government cracked down on kidnapping, common criminals learnt from the guerrillas and started kidnapping anyone they could (I remember one case of an unemployed Cali woman who had her baby abducted, i think the baby was finally returned after a ransom of 500,000 pesos was paid).

Mr. Hollywood says on Nov 22, 2005, 09:44:

If the FARC (or anyone else) continues to hold hundreds of kidnapped prisoners, it HAS to cost them a lot in both money and, especially, manpower. There's got to be a multiple of 4 or 5 guards and caretakers to every prisoner, which ads up really quickly.

DanielPaisa says on Nov 22, 2005, 10:00:

false... they don't need 4 or 5 guards... normally, they keep them on the jungles, where is safer to stay with them than try to run without knowing the area. Also, FARC has control over some natives in the area, and they hold everyone suspicius of escaping until they confirm he's not a prisoner. A friend of mine was kidnapped a while ago, when they set him free, he was held by some tribe for 2 days, until they could confirm he was released.

Also, farc keeps somo of them, but some others are already dead. There has been many cases where a family pays a ransom, and they find the dead body later, killed before the family paid. The ones they keep are because they have low cost to mantain them, but the ransom rises sky high. Families become desperate, and they start selling everything they have, so, sadly, they are kind of a really valuable asset for this terrorist. They keep them long to dry out their families.

Daniel, el Paisa

utopiacowboy says on Nov 22, 2005, 10:26:

What was the reason for the tribe holding him? Were the tribe FARC supporters? Do they get a piece of the action?

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

DanielPaisa says on Nov 22, 2005, 11:01:

they get killed if they don't Not supporters, in a war, sometimes you have to serve someone if you want to stay neutral. They know if someone escapes and they let him go, they'll be in trouble. They kept him cautive for two days until they confirmed he was released, and then they helped him to get to a road. maybe it's a way of showing some loyalty... i really don't know... but there are just few cases when kidnaped people can escape. You're better off with them than on your own, with no clothes, no shoes, no food, and not knowing the area. I sadly believe that many of those kidnaped guy found death while trying to escape.

Daniel, el Paisa

Mr. Hollywood says on Nov 22, 2005, 12:23:

DanielPaisa, please explain how one holds someone captive without at least one person watching him day and night? Broken out into eight hour watches, that's 3 people minimum.

Platano said that when he was kidnapped he had two people watching him whenever they were underway, which was most of the time. Perhaps he could shed some more light on this question?

DanielPaisa says on Nov 22, 2005, 12:55:

ok, im gonna try to be clearer... When you are being kept captive, you're not alone... at first you start with one group, lets say, those poor guys that where kidnaped along with you, and then you walk and walk untill you reach one of their camps in the middle of the jungle. These camps have prisons where they keep these guys. One of this prisons can easily hold 20 or 40 people with 3 or 4 guards. Somo of you may have seen in the news, after the "Plan patriota" they found a prison where they kept lots of soldiers that where taken hostage after an atack on "las Delicias" (about 1998, i believe). You could count at least 30 or 40 soldiers inside the prison, and i can guarantee they don't need 120 guards to keep that prison. They have their camp, with prisoners inside that cage, the ussual guards arround the camp and, let's say, 2 or 3 guards. If the attempt to escape, a single shot would wake up the entire FARC front, so i don't think they tryed to escape.

The thing is, maybe you think that kiddnapers have every guy sitting on a tent with 4 guards, but that's not real. They have so many that they need to build prisons inside their camps.

If each FARC front has one prison to keep 20 or 30 prisoners, they can hold 1000 kidnapped people with no need to have that huge Kidnapped/captor rate... i would say, for every 4 or 5 kidnapped people, there must be one guard, not the other way. These are real prisons, people!!! i'll try to get some images so you understand what i mean.

Daniel, el Paisa

DanielPaisa says on Nov 22, 2005, 13:10:

I have found.. a FARC video on the het where they show how do they capture this people and how they keep them, and it's just disgusting... i can't believe there is people around the world supporting this guys...

Let me finish downloadin this and i'll post some video captures, so you see how these people keep their prisoners.

Daniel, el Paisa

utopiacowboy says on Nov 22, 2005, 13:15:

Now this is an interesting thread.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

DanielPaisa says on Nov 22, 2005, 13:17:

Here`s one image http://www.ucin.org/rcd/dih/campocon1.jpg
http://www.educweb.org/Aeropostale/images/Otages/Militaires%201.jpg

doesn't this look like a prison to you?? they just stash these good people in there and make them wait for years.

Daniel, el Paisa

utopiacowboy says on Nov 22, 2005, 13:28:

I wonder who supplies them with barbed wire. Looks like they use plenty of it.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

Mr. Hollywood says on Nov 22, 2005, 15:51:

Thanks for the pictures, Daniel Thanks for clarifying, Daniel. I've seen that video before, too. I think it was taken either before or very shortly after Uribe took office. I would imagine that it's much harder to hide something like that now, given the increased military pressure on the FARC in the southern jungles.

If that's true, I hope they wouldn't just shoot all those poor people when they become inconvenient, but that's probably part of the master plan.

For what it's worth, I know a couple people who were kidnapped by the FARC and were ransomed. None of them were held in a camp like that. Instead, they hiked pretty much all the time through the mountains. My one friend, who has a sense of humor about it, said it got him in the best shape of his life, before or since.

platano says on Nov 22, 2005, 17:19:

Mr. H, En la ciudad había una persona armada en la pieza como guardia. En el campo había por lo menos una persona (a veces más). Cuando caminando de lugar a lugar habían dos, uno frente, uno atrás.

Estoy de acuerdo contigo... debe ser super caro mantener presos, alimentarlos, etc.

No estoy de acuerdo que solo secuestran a los que tengan plata. También han secuestrado a gente pobre, hasta las muchachas de servicio (serivientas que limpian y cocinan) y exigen CP$30.000 o sea menos que US$15.00 y las familias pobres encuentran los CP$30.000 y pagan el rescate. No sé si esto es actividad guerrillera o simplemente delincuencia común imitando las tácticas de la guerrilla. Es comportamiento asqueroso por donde o quien sea.

plátano

kat1 (Moderator) says on Nov 23, 2005, 06:36:

My brother in law told us, he didn't sleep in the ground but in a very small bed,there were kids around and some of them kept coming and stared at them like rare animals, there were others looking after him and a British guy, both been released already. There were campesinos near, that cook for them, he said he eat mostly eggs and spaguetti.In many of this small towns many people help the guerrilla, they have no choice. My dad was held for 10 days (long story) and he said he talked to many of them, some could not even write or read, and some talk about marxism and my dad said they didn't have a clue what they were talking about.

DanielPaisa says on Nov 23, 2005, 09:25:

GIB got it right.. these walks ussually take several weeks to get from the spot you where kidnspped to the camps. Sometimes, if they're being persued by the military, or if the ransom is paid, they let these people go. The original question was about people who has been kidnapped since a while ago, and they can't be walking for 8 years...

Daniel, el Paisa

juancegomez says on Nov 23, 2005, 15:58:

.... Yep, most hostages (both the thousands/high hundreds of "economic" hostages and the "high profile" 60 or so) aren't necessarily still being kept in formal prisons, except when the FARC unit that has captured them stops to set up camp I suppose, but rather are in practice made to walk for long periods of time as if they were simply other members of the guerrilla.

To do that, importantly, they provide them with military uniforms, so that they look just like any other guerrilla from a distance. Logically, this makes it hard/dangerous for them to be identified by their would-be rescuers.

As for platano's side comments on the AUC's "hostages", I'd go farther and speculate the following: Most of them, those not released or otherwise handled (ie: for criminal activity such as economic extortion, though they hardly do it on the guerrilla's scale), were probably already killed and as such aren't/weren't even living "hostages" for long.

Hence, unfortunately, many of the relatives that think that the paramilitaries are hidding a few kidnapped people, like in the low hundreds or so, may well be disappointed. Especially given that their usual modus operandi is not that of extortionists but simply of murderers.

Can't really prove that just now, and later facts may prove that something else is going on, but that's what I've been thinking about.

DanielPaisa says on Nov 23, 2005, 21:18:

man.. keep it cool..

Daniel, el Paisa