Venezuela: Police corruption blamed for kidnapping epidemic

[naaman fletcher]

Jeremy McDermott: Officially there were 895 kidnappings in Venezuela last year. However, a government survey, suppressed by president Hugo Chavez, suggests that the real figure may be closer to 17,000 - 48 abductions every day - with policemen among the principal kidnappers.

"I would say that in Caracas eight out of every ten kidnappings have some level of police involvement," said Joel Rengifo, a former head of the investigative police's anti-kidnapping division who now works as a private consultant.

...

Before Mr Chavez began his Bolivarian Revolution in 1998, there were few registered kidnappings in Venezuela and most of those were carried out in the border region with Colombia, snatched by Colombia's Marxist rebels, who had turned their nation into the world's kidnap capital. Now kidnappings have dropped away in Colombia, but are out of control in Venezuela.

A survey carried out by the National Institute of Statistics estimated that 16,917 kidnappings were carried out over a 12-month period between 2008 and 2009. The document, which The Scotsman has obtained a copy of, was never published after the government saw the level of crime and violence it revealed.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=101950