Six arrested in kidnap plot - Immigration status?

Six people have been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and other charges after a Colorado Springs man claimed he was captured at gunpoint and driven to Commerce City last Sunday.

Colorado Springs police said today that members of the Adams County Sheriff's office on Wednesday raided a house in the 8500 block of Dahlia Street, where they found the kidnap victim and six suspects. The victim was freed and the six suspects were arrested.

According to police, Alejandro Solis Garcia, 25, drove his car on Sunday to the residence of Luis Arturo Mendez-Martinez in the 4300 block of Edison Avenue on the east side of Colorado Springs. Mendez-Martinez allegedly was interested in buying the car.

Garcia told police he was met by five people in a burgundy Lincoln, who shoved him at gunpoint into the back seat and drove away.

Garcia's family said they received telephone calls stating that Garcia would be murdered if they didn't provide a ransom of cash, three vehicles and a quantity of drugs, according to police.

Police, with cooperation of the victim's and suspects' cell phone providers, were able to track the Lincoln to the Dahlia Street location in Adams County on Wednesday, where the arrests were made.

Those arrested include Mendez-Martinez, 26, of Commerce City; Angelina Franceschi, 18, no address given; Reyes Meraz-Rubio, 22, of Colorado Springs; Marco Antonio Peinado-Caraveo, 24, of Colorado Springs; and one juvenile.

Kidnappings is a very profitable business in Mexico and teh open borders policy is only a matter of time before we are faced with that threat in the USA.

Monday, June 14, 2004

Kidnappings are out of control in Mexico

By Barnard R. Thompson

Mexico’s crime wave continues, with violent kidnappings for ransom, extortion or worse rising to tsunami levels in greater Mexico City. And while many, in desperate hope for the safe return of kidnapped family members and loved ones meet ransom demands, time and again the victims are found dead, often with clear evidence of torture and abuse before their brutal murders.

No longer a cottage industry targeting the privileged few, today nearly everyone, rich to middle class to those of lesser means, faces the threat of kidnapping by organized gangs or the unorganized. Kidnapping for ransom demands are tailored to the victims, and if family or friends lag in paying even small amounts they may be sent crudely amputated body parts as a sign of worse to come.

There are “express kidnappings,” with victims carjacked or otherwise driven (often in taxis they foolishly hail on the street as some cabdrivers work in concert with other criminals) from one bank or ATM machine to another until a victim’s credit and cash withdrawal card funds are exhausted.

In recent weeks five more heinous murders of kidnap victims in Mexico City have pushed citizens to unprecedented levels of outrage. As such, people are protesting the “severe national security problem,” while at the same time demanding not just protection but also for real action to be taken at all levels of government against the steady flood of crime.

A social mobilization is growing, started to a degree via the Internet and electronic mail. Anticrime groups and organizations are being formed; federal, state and municipal officials are being called to task; stricter laws are supposedly being drafted; and a major march and demonstration against kidnappings and violence is planned for June 27 in Mexico City.

On June 2, the Mexico City newspaper Reforma published an interview with Diego Ricardo Canto, identified as a consultant with Kroll Inc., that touts itself as “the world’s foremost independent risk consulting company.” One division of Kroll’s victim services is The Kidnap for Ransom Practice, that reportedly deploys “case officers” worldwide to assist clients.

According to Canto, who referred to a Kroll study, in 2003 Mexico ranked number two in Latin America with 3,000 kidnappings, second only to Colombia where 4,000 such crimes were committed. He added that 50 percent of all kidnappings worldwide are in Latin America.

A representative of the Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, José Antonio Ortega Sánchez, said in the same Reforma piece that murders resulting from kidnappings have become commonplace in many areas of Mexico. On a national basis, Ortega has also said that reported deaths from kidnappings since 1996 total 162, with the annual figures getting progressively larger.

It should be noted that many kidnappings go unreported in Mexico. According to studies by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, over 90 percent of kidnappings are not reported to authorities due to faithlessness in police and government officials.

The Kroll interview, coupled with other media reports and the growing demands of civil groups, business and professional organizations, government employees, labor unions and the e-mail campaign, seem to have finally gotten the governments’ attention.

President Vicente Fox Quesada has acknowledged the gravity of the crime situation in many areas, saying “we will not wash our hands of this problem.” Also noting that kidnappings come under the jurisdiction of the states, he has vowed that federal authorities will work with state and local governments to coordinate anti-kidnapping efforts.

As well, the President is calling for legislators to pass reforms to the Criminal Justice Law that are bogged down in an unproductive Congress, including amendments that will make kidnapping a federal crime.

Still, there have also been negative — and maybe oversensitive — reactions to the recent news reports on kidnappings and kidnapping statistics.

José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, Mexico’s Deputy Attorney General for Organized Crime, denounced the Kroll statistics as “deceiving and far from reality.” Santiago said that 2,165 kidnappings were committed between 2000 and 2003.

On June 11, Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha announced that a criminal investigation of private security consulting firms, that unlawfully advise families of kidnap victims not to notify police, is underway.

As to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Rasputinesque conspiracy theorist mayor of Mexico City, he has confirmed recent charges by one of his henchmen. They ludicrously claim that the mobilizations against kidnappings in Mexico City are part of yet another plot against the politically ambitious López Obrador, this time orchestrated by Fox’s National Action Party.

Kidnapping thrives in Mexico

Congress is slated to debate a law that would crack down on ‘express kidnappings.’
By Gretchen Peters | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

MEXICO CITY AND CUERNAVACA - When Héctor Pineda Velázquez was kidnapped from his ranch in Guerrero state and held by masked captors for more than a month, his family didn’t notify the press or ask authorities to help secure his release. They paid an undisclosed ransom.

That may seem strange, considering Mr. Pineda is a federal congressman.

“Everything was arranged by my family, in particular, my son,” a disheveled and distraught Pineda told reporters outside his home in Coyuca de Catalán on Sept. 6, the day he was released.

After the string of highly publicized child-abduction cases this summer, Americans might find it hard to imagine that a kidnapped high-level Mexican official barely makes the news here – and receives no official help.

But in Mexico, a kidnapping occurs every six hours on average. Mexico is now second only to war-torn Colombia in the number of annual kidnappings. While few victims are killed, few perpetrators in this thriving multimillion-dollar industry are ever caught.

“In the US, the great majority of the kidnapping cases are solved,” says Walter Farrer, the Mexico operations chief at the security firm Pinkerton and Burns International. “Here, it’s a business, and as awful as it sounds, it is treated as a transaction.”

And business is up. The Mexican business association, Coparmex, which tracks kidnapping, lists 331 reported cases so far this year, compared to 221 in all of 2001. The actual figure, however, is estimated to be three or four times higher. According to various studies, fewer than a third of families here ever report a kidnapping, apparently out of fear that Mexico’s corrupt and inefficient police are either involved in the crime or will botch any rescue effort.

Moreover, the common “express kidnap” – in which a victim is briefly abducted, forced to withdraw money from ATMs, and then released – is considered violent robbery under Mexican law. Government statistics indicate there are more than 10 express kidnaps a day here – or about 4,000 a year.

Mexico’s abduction problem has spawned a billion-dollar-a-year private security industry, which provides rich families and big businesses with bodyguards, armored cars, prevention training, and kidnap negotiators. Wealthy families have been known to pay as much as $30 million in ransom, though Mr. Farrer and others say the average asking price is around $280,000 and the final payment usually negotiated to about $19,000.

Another new trend is the “virtual kidnap”: gangs go for young professionals driving expensive cars, and usually negotiate their ransoms and releases within about 36 hours. “They go for volume and speed to reduce the risk,” says Farrer. “Often, they don’t even steal the car, which would be easier to trace.”

The growing number of kidnappings has yielded new products catering to kidnap fears. Volkswagen has introduced an armored version of its Passat sedan to the Mexican market. Advertisements show a mock abduction attempt foiled by the bullet- and flame-proof car.

Victims of a wave of kidnappings in the 1990s in Cuernavaca, in central Morelos state, say the trauma shredded the fabric of their affluent community.

“I would say about 80 or 90 percent of the ‘kidnappable’ people here were kidnapped,” says student Gerardo Cortina, who was held for 15 days after armed men nabbed him as he was leaving his university one evening. “We all asked ourselves, ‘Who’s next?’ “

Many victims simply packed up with their families and left Mexico. “Anna,” who didn’t want her real name used, moved with her family from Cuernavaca to Dallas after armed men broke into their home in 1995 and kidnapped her for 30 hours.

She recently returned to Mexico after giving birth to a son. “Now that I am a parent, I can’t imagine what my parents went through,” she says. Seven years later, “we still call each other every 30 minutes to check everyone is OK.”

Though kidnap victims in the US are more likely to be killed, Mexico’s highly organized kidnap gangs usually threaten to injure their victims if families don’t raise ransoms quickly. Some are known for sending body parts, often a finger or an ear, to show they’re serious.

“I’m still filled with fear,” says Pedro Fletes, whose captors threatened to cut off his finger when he was kidnapped last year in Mexico City. Mr. Fletes recently started an organization offering counseling for victims and their families, and meeting with the government to help track kidnap gangs. “I’m adamant that someone has to do something,” he says.

Fletes isn’t the only private citizen who has taken it upon himself to address Mexico’s kidnap problem. Other more secretive groups track kidnap cases, meet privately with trusted government officials, and provide various forms of assistance to families when a loved one is taken.

Alberto, a businessman and member of one such group who wouldn’t be identified by his full name, says kidnapping is no longer just a problem for the rich. “We’re seeing more cases in small villages where a shop owner is kidnapped for somewhere around 5,000 to 10,000 pesos [about $500 to $1,000],” he says.

Mexico’s government insists it is taking action. On Saturday, the justice department announced the sentencing of a jeweler-turned-kidnapper known as “the colonel” to 18 years in prison, along with five of his associates. Congress will soon consider legislation to stiffen penalties on express kidnaps. And the newly formed Federal Investigation Agency, a force similar to the FBI, has rescued 133 kidnap victims in less than two years, and nabbed more than 80 members of kidnap gangs. Last week, federal police arrested 13 members of a kidnap gang known as “the Ranchers” in an operation in central Puebla state, rescuing a 63-year-old victim.

But critics say dozens of more dangerous groups are still operating, and it’s usually low-level worker bees, not kidnap masterminds, who get caught.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0917/p06s02-woam.html

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