Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

VENEZUELA: “Express” Kidnappings All the Rage

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, May 13 2009 (IPS) - Rosa M. was about to blow out the candles on her cake when the phone rang. Instead of another birthday greeting, she heard her coworker Gladys sobbing and asking her for financial help, because on her way to the party in the Venezuelan capital she had fallen prey to an “express kidnapping.”

The small social gathering instantly became a collection centre for the ransom money, a little over 15,000 dollars. The cash was put in an envelope and taken to a street rubbish bin, and after an anxious wait the victim was freed, minus her handbag and belongings, but unharmed except for a few bruises.

A couple, both professionals, were intercepted at the door of their apartment building in a middle class district of Caracas. They were driven all night long in their own car from one friend’s home to another, collecting donations for their ransom. Every time their request was fruitless, their captors pistol-whipped them.

The crime reports in major Venezuelan cities are increasingly filled with stories like these, “which are hugely under-reported, because many people won’t make complaints for fear of being attacked again, or because they are discouraged by the scant interest the police show in investigating the cases,” criminologist Luis Cedeño of Paz Activa, a non-governmental organisation working for public safety, told IPS.

The criminals “know that the punishment for an express kidnapping is less than for conventional kidnapping (up to 20 years in prison), as it is defined as aggravated robbery with deprivation of freedom,” and the sentence is hardly ever longer than eight years in prison, Cedeño said.

In express kidnappings, also frequently used in Argentina and to a lesser extent in other countries of Latin America, kidnappers hold their victims for a short time, usually just a few hours, forcing them to get ransom money from their families or their bank accounts or credit cards.

Express kidnappings have become popular among criminals in Venezuela because they are faster and easier to carry out, bring in money quickly, are less risky, and require hardly any infrastructure or research on the victims, since their own cars can be used by the perpetrators, experts say.

“Collecting money from relatives and friends is the usual method, but in some cases the victims themselves raise cash by pawning their cars or motorbikes,” said retired commissioner Fermín Mármol, a former chief of the judicial police who served as justice minister in 1993.

Motorbikes, vehicles and recently even pets are also sometimes stolen and offered back to their owners for quick ransom money. But sometimes the property is not returned, even after payment.

“The global boom in pets and the high value placed on animals as companions has encouraged aberrations, including rampant commercialisation, over-exploitation of breeding females, and crimes like these animal kidnappings,” Cristina Camilloni of the Caracas-based Association for the Defence of Animals (APROA) told IPS.

Joanna González said that in March, her little Schnauzer bitch was stolen from a park in southeast Caracas. The dogsnatchers found her telephone number, called her and asked for the equivalent of 1,400 dollars in ransom.

She bargained them down to half that sum and left it in an envelope next to a fire hydrant as agreed, but she never got her pet back.

Police sources say there is even a table of ransom rates. The thieves look for small breeds of dog, demand ransoms of between 1,000 and 2,500 dollars, and prefer bitches, which they can sell to breeders who sell puppies on the street.

“Institutions like the Caracas city government are responsible, because they grant permission for dog vendors to use city spaces. For instance, a sports field near the APROA headquarters was taken away from the young people in the community, and animals are sold there without proper sanitary precautions, at highly speculative prices,” Camilloni complained.

The police do not investigate thefts of pets or of goods like cars, the recovery of which is left to the insurance companies. They have enough on their hands dealing with major kidnappings, according to experts.

Cedeño said that the judicial police recorded 25 kidnappings in Venezuela in 1988, 50 in 1998, 67 in 2000, 200 in 2002, 279 in 2007 and 385 in 2008.

So far this year, the National Cattle Ranchers Federation (FEDENAGA) has recorded 134 kidnappings. Fifty-nine of the victims have been freed, 33 have been rescued, four escaped, four died, and the rest are still being held by their kidnappers.

The state of Barinas in the southwestern plains has had the highest number of kidnappings of wealthy landowners and ranchers according to FEDENAGA, with 35 abductions, followed by Zulia, on the northwestern border with Colombia, with 28.

The judicial police have records of 166 kidnappings up to May 8 of this year, that is, more than one a day.

In the last week of March and the first week of April this year, the judicial police rescued 16 victims, killed 14 kidnappers and captured another 24, according to Luis Fernández, the deputy director of this detective force.

Cedeño says under-reporting may be as high as 70 percent, “which means that for every case reported, there are two or three more that go unrecorded, and the reason is that the bands of kidnappers are in collusion with the police. This is the first thing the families are told, to stop them from calling the police.”

This criminal “industry” has a turnover of tens of millions of dollars as, based on his investigations of many cases, Cedeño estimates that the average ransom amounts to about 118,000 dollars.

What can be done? Criminologists call for an end to criminal impunity. In this country of 27 million people, where around 14,000 homicides are committed every year, less than five percent of murder cases result in conviction and sentencing.

Experts have also recommended purging and restructuring the dozens of national, regional and municipal police forces, improving the administration of justice, and reforming the hellish conditions in the country’s 32 prisons.

Prison violence kills more than one inmate a day, in this country which was one of the pioneers of the abolition of the death penalty in 1863.

Cedeño advocates urgent measures, two in particular: reactivating or revitalising anti-extorsion and kidnapping units in the main police forces, and forming integrated units with members of several police forces, to combat the collusion with criminals that exists within some of the police bodies.

In addition, “kidnapping, the worst crime after murder, must stop being treated as a taboo subject,” Cedeño said.

He pointed out, as an example, that commissioner Sergio González, the head of the anti-kidnapping unit of the judicial police, was removed from office in July 2008, after reporting that 179 kidnappings had taken place in the first half of last year, 55 more than in the same period in 2007.