Thursday, November 08, 2007

Secuestros relámpagos

Express kidnappings are on the rise in Guate. There were seven in the first five days of November, at least one of them in La Antigua. Women are the preferred victims. Their loved ones usually get a call within 15 minutes of the snatching and on average they are released within six hours once the ransom monies have been transfered to the kidnappers: generally beetween 10 and 20 thousand Quetzales ($1300-$2600, not a lot really). The kidnap gangs tend to use hard-to-trace mobile phones.

Back in 2005 there was a fairly crappy movie made about this phenomenon in Venezuela:

No comments: