Gangs turn to kidnapping in Trinidad and other C’bean nations

SAN FERNANDO, Trinidad: A businessman arriving at his front gate was dragged from his car, blindfolded and taken to a wooden shack where he was held for 17 terrifying days, hands and legs bound to bedposts in a wooden shack.

Saran Kissoondan said he might not have survived if his family hadn’t paid Trinidadian $3 million (US$500,000) in ransom. He didn’t know the men who fired a shot into the air and forced him from the car as his wife and children looked on. “Honestly, I thought they came to kill me,” he said after his captors freed him this month. As in most cases, his kidnappers have not been caught. Caribbean countries including Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and the Dominican Republic have seen a rise in kidnappings for ransom that police say appears to be a lucrative new business for criminal gangs. In the Dominican Republic, six victims have been taken captive and released unharmed since January 2002, and 15 suspects have been arrested.

Guyana reported 15 ransom kidnappings in the past 13 months. There were 29 in Trinidad last year — more than three times the number in 2001. Trinidad’s kidnappings used to be drug-related but now anyone who appears to have money can be targeted by gangs that once focussed on stealing cars, police say. Henry Millington, head of Trinidad’s police anti-kidnapping unit, said they have been successful in having kidnap victims returned safely without ransom being paid about half the time. But in many cases families choose to pay the ransom, encouraging more kidnappings. “People hearing about kidnappings know that it is very easy money,” Millington said. He said they arrest kidnappers in about 30 percent of cases.

Trinidad’s Parliament has proposed a law to increase the maximum sentence for kidnapping from 15 to 25 years’ imprisonment. Nine Trinidadians have been kidnapped this year. Most have been freed unharmed or with only minor injuries after wealthy families paid as much as Trinidadian $5 million (US$830,000). On Wednesday, kidnappers nabbed Ronald John, the brother of an opposition politician, for the second time in six months. Two victims died last year — one choked on his vomit while gagged, another was shot. The kidnappings have prompted concern in Trinidad and Tobago, a two-island country of 1.3 million people where killings also are on the rise. But Trinidad’s 172 slayings last year remain a fraction of the 1,045 killed in Jamaica and 774 murdered in Puerto Rico. On the north coast of South America in Guyana, meanwhile, gunmen released engineer Kenneth Babulall on Thursday just hours after taking him hostage. A ransom of Guyana $3 million (US$15,000) was paid, police said.

Two kidnap victims remain missing in Guyana, where many cases are believed linked to the drug trade. Often, “the victims have not cooperated with the police and so we have little to go on,” said Guyana’s Assistant Superin-tendent David Ramnarine. In an October case believed linked to drugs, a gang snatched businessman Bramanand Nandalall, who managed to escape five days later. Police shot and killed two suspected kidnappers following his release, and said rival gangs killed five other suspects. Wealthy people in Trinidad and Guyana are hiring bodyguards and armed escorts. Kissoondan, 36, now pays armed guards to watch over his used car dealership and adjacent home in Trinidad’s southern town of San Fernando, where he lives with his wife, 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. He said he’s broke now and that the experience taught him “it’s very dangerous to be living in Trinidad as a businessman.”