A kidnapping Story

A KIDNAPPING STORY

Most of the kidnapping that takes place in Colombia is conducted by FARC.
Something common in this group is that they especially kidnap people traveling on the highways. People who work for a multinational company or foreign government represent the desired targets. These people will generally have a team of body guards with guns to protect themselves in a dangerous zone.

This was the case of Andres, the father of a guy I recently met in Bogota, the capital city of Colombia. On December 15, 2004, Andres was driving alone from Medellin to Bogota. When he was in the middle of the highway he was stopped by a froup of five boys. Each one of them has a riffle and dressed green and brown clothes. Inmediately they took him into the forest and started to walk. Five hours later they arrived to a little house. There, Andres was tied with tape and locked up in a small and dark room. The next day two of the boys entered in the room and gave him a piece of bread and water. A few minutes later when he finished his breakfast, the kidnappers gave him a cellular phone, so that he could call his son to say he was fine and to say that he needed all the money from the chain of restaurants and apartments he owned to be free. The boy was completely confused, he didn´t now what to do, but what the really knew was that the guerrilla will kill his dad if he say something to the police.

Raul, Andre´s son, took time to get all the money. As a consequence the guys that had kidnapped his dad decided to send him something that could prove that he was alive, but at the same time, to prove that he was suffering because his son was taking too much time. Raul did what his dad asked him to do otherwise the guerrilla will kill his dad.

While Raul was getting all the money to Andres, he was hoping to receive good news as soon as posible. Andres was dehydrated because of the long walks under the cold nights and sunny days, without something to drink besides he was an old man. During this walks he tried to be friendly with the boys, talking with them about interesting topics, without mentioning things that would offend them . With luck and little by little he made good friends, and with his personality he obtained the confidence of the boysthathad kidnapped him.Now they were able to talk about personal thingslike their family, and also personal problems.

One day, Andres was asked for a favor from one of the boys. E wanted a paper and a pencil to write something to his son. After tree days, the same boy gave him a piece of napkinand a pencil to write on it. He was not allowed to do that, because the victims can trasmit information about the place they are. But this boy was very special and wanted to help him. The boy sent the letter to Andre´s son and he wrote back , this continuo for one month. All what they used to write in this letters was about their feelings, to now were they during this time.
One day Andres was watching television, when he heard through a wall that the guerrill had received all the money he owned. After four months of being kidnapped, Andres was finilly realesed. The guerrila made an appointment with Raul near the highway, exactly in the place Andres had been kidnapped. When Andres arrived to his house, one week later he sought the help of a team of lawyers in an effort to salvage his business assets. The guerrilas that had kidnapped him knew what he was doing, and on day, when he was at the rear door of one of his restaurants they shot him till he was death. His family now are scared to walk the streets.


After all this suffering, the family decided to organize a march with the objective to protest aginst the Farc and especially against kidnapping and violence. A lot of people from each of the colombian cities went out to the streets to show their opinion about this situation that not only affected Andre´s family, but a lot of people like rich and poor. The method they used was to write in big placards and to show some pictures of corruption and delinquent acts.