Cyclic Hotline
23rd Jun 2001, 20:50
57 Arrested for Ecuador Kidnapping
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Authorities arrested 57 alleged members of a gang accused of seizing oil workers in Ecuador last year and killing at least one American hostage, officials said Friday.
Fifty of the suspects were arrested in different regions of the country on Friday, Colombian National Police chief Gen. Ernesto Gilibert told reporters in Bogota. The others are Ecuadoreans captured in their country, he added.
Gilibert identified the gang leader as Gerardo Herrera, and said he is a former member of a small Colombian guerrilla faction known as the People's Liberation Army, or EPL.
He said the group was believed responsible for at least eight separate kidnappings in Ecuador since 1990, primarily targeting foreigners.
At least 12 Americans have been abducted by the gang, police said. Gilibert said the gang is the same one that held seven Canadians and an American for ransom for 100 days in late 1999 in Ecuador.
In the latest case, 10 foreign oil workers were kidnapped Oct. 12 from an oil camp in the Pompeya jungle region of Ecuador, about 45 miles south of the border with Colombia. Two French captives escaped a few days later.
At the end of January, amid tense and secret ransom negotiations, the body of one of one American hostages - Ronald Sander, 54, an employee of Tulsa, Okla., oil company Helmerich & Payne, Inc. - was found on a jungle road.
Sander, of Sunrise Beach, Mo., had been shot five times in the back and was covered in a white sheet scrawled with the words in Spanish: "I am a gringo. For nonpayment of ransom. HP company.''
The remaining seven hostages - including four other Americans, a Chilean, an Argentine and a New Zealander - were freed in March, reportedly after a $13 million ransom was paid for their release.
One of the freed Americans, reached at his home in Gold Hill, Ore., said he still has bad memories of the kidnaping and was "happy and delighted'' of hearing the news.
"I'm looking forward to seeing these guys convicted,'' said Arnold Alford, who worked for Oregon-based Erickson Air-Crane, Inc. as a load master for heavy lift helicopters in the Ecuadorian oil camp.
The U.S. embassy in Bogota had no comment Friday night.
The South American country has the world's leading kidnapping rate, with more than 3,700 reported abductions last year alone, the majority by rebels.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Authorities arrested 57 alleged members of a gang accused of seizing oil workers in Ecuador last year and killing at least one American hostage, officials said Friday.
Fifty of the suspects were arrested in different regions of the country on Friday, Colombian National Police chief Gen. Ernesto Gilibert told reporters in Bogota. The others are Ecuadoreans captured in their country, he added.
Gilibert identified the gang leader as Gerardo Herrera, and said he is a former member of a small Colombian guerrilla faction known as the People's Liberation Army, or EPL.
He said the group was believed responsible for at least eight separate kidnappings in Ecuador since 1990, primarily targeting foreigners.
At least 12 Americans have been abducted by the gang, police said. Gilibert said the gang is the same one that held seven Canadians and an American for ransom for 100 days in late 1999 in Ecuador.
In the latest case, 10 foreign oil workers were kidnapped Oct. 12 from an oil camp in the Pompeya jungle region of Ecuador, about 45 miles south of the border with Colombia. Two French captives escaped a few days later.
At the end of January, amid tense and secret ransom negotiations, the body of one of one American hostages - Ronald Sander, 54, an employee of Tulsa, Okla., oil company Helmerich & Payne, Inc. - was found on a jungle road.
Sander, of Sunrise Beach, Mo., had been shot five times in the back and was covered in a white sheet scrawled with the words in Spanish: "I am a gringo. For nonpayment of ransom. HP company.''
The remaining seven hostages - including four other Americans, a Chilean, an Argentine and a New Zealander - were freed in March, reportedly after a $13 million ransom was paid for their release.
One of the freed Americans, reached at his home in Gold Hill, Ore., said he still has bad memories of the kidnaping and was "happy and delighted'' of hearing the news.
"I'm looking forward to seeing these guys convicted,'' said Arnold Alford, who worked for Oregon-based Erickson Air-Crane, Inc. as a load master for heavy lift helicopters in the Ecuadorian oil camp.
The U.S. embassy in Bogota had no comment Friday night.
The South American country has the world's leading kidnapping rate, with more than 3,700 reported abductions last year alone, the majority by rebels.