Kidnapping becomes epidemic

Armed gangs control the slum where the kidnapping victims are taken.
Knight Ridder Newspapers
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- On a cool morning in October, an American missionary named Wes Morgan was riding in his church's Toyota 4-Runner when three gunmen stormed up to the vehicle. One put a pistol to his face.
Another shoved his Haitian driver into the backseat and took the wheel. Within 10 minutes, the 53-year-old from North Carolina said, he was driven into the Haitian capital's Cite Soleil slum as two of the kidnappers hung out the back windows and shot into the air to celebrate his capture.
Among Haiti's litany of woes, kidnapping has surged into an epidemic in recent months, with an estimated eight to 10 people abducted for ransom every day -- including 25 U.S. citizens just since April -- according to the FBI.
The 25 were later released, the FBI added, but three other Americans were killed trying to resist apparent kidnapping attempts.
Security experts say the number of kidnappings in this country of 8.1 million people now dwarfs the notoriously high levels in Colombia, a nation of 43 million people where some 2,200 abductions were reported in 2003.
Some examples
In just one day last week, U.S. missionary Phillip Snyder and 11 children in a schoolbus were kidnapped in separate episodes. The students were freed hours later under unclear circumstances, and Snyder was released the next day. Haitian press reports said he paid an undisclosed ransom.
"He's out; he's safe," said Alejandro Barbeito, an FBI supervisory special agent in Miami who heads one of the three bureau squads that deploy for foreign cases like Snyder's. FBI agents routinely help when U.S. citizens are kidnapped abroad.
The U.S. citizens taken hostage are mostly Haitian Americans living here or visiting family, including a New York state trooper who was abducted in August and later freed, the FBI says. Often, the victims are children snatched to extort their parents.
More and more, they report being taken to Cite Soleil, a slum neighborhood so dominated by armed gangs that Haitian police almost never go there. U.N. peacekeepers have tried to seal off the area, but kidnappers can still move in and out. Morgan says that when he was abducted, his vehicle didn't pass a single U.N. checkpoint on the way into the slum. Snyder was also held captive there.
The Haitian Red Cross appears to be one of the few groups that can move about the slum freely. After Snyder was shot in the arm, a Red Cross medic treated his wound, his family said.
What changed
The abductions are just one prong of the violence that has dogged Port-au-Prince since an armed rebellion ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last year. Though the security situation has improved in recent months, the chaos in Cite Soleil continues despite the presence in Haiti of nearly 8,000 U.N. peacekeepers.
"Cite Soleil is the deepest wound in Haiti's belly," said Juan Gabriel Valdes, the U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, in an interview with The Miami Herald last week. He called it the most "complicated problem of all" facing the U.N. mission here.
The rash of abducted Americans, meanwhile, has made Haiti the No. 1 destination for FBI kidnap investigators like Barbeito's squad. Its members advise families on negotiating with captors, help the local authorities and arrange for FBI evidence teams that can build cases against the kidnappers.
One victim's story
Morgan, who said he has cancer and has had his stomach removed, needs to eat small doses every two hours. He was kidnapped Oct. 14, less than a week after getting out of chemotherapy.
The gunmen who captured him and his driver took them to a bare concrete shack in Cite Soleil where a gang leader waited with an M-16 assault rifle, Morgan recounted in an interview. The man leveled the gun between Morgan's eyes and said he'd kill him if someone didn't pay $300,000.
The leader then left the pair under the guard of another man, armed with a pistol. Morgan said he called his church group, New Directions International, on his cell to tell them what happened. He described his captivity as loose -- he was allowed to step outside to urinate. He thought of trying to escape, he added, but figured he would never get out of the slum.
The church contacted the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, and the FBI began helping with the ransom negotiations, Morgan said. The same night as the kidnapping, Morgan and the driver were released after the church paid $10,000.