Kidnapped Honduran adviser rescued
Published: January 16, 2005
Authorities rescued a legal adviser to the Honduran Security Ministry eight hours after he was kidnapped by gang members, authorities said Saturday.
A police officer was shot to death while responding to the abduction of lawyer Alex Florentino Montoya on Friday as he left his home on the western outskirts of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.
Police later found Montoya gagged and bound to a bed in a shack west of Tegucigalpa after chasing down his kidnappers by helicopter, according to Napoleon Nazar, director-general of criminal investigation for the federal police.
“I’m OK, thank God,” Montoya said at a news conference. “The gang members beat me and told me repeatedly that they would kill me because of my work, and that my family was in danger.”
Nazar called the rescue effort “a complete success,” noting that members of the Mara 18, a violent youth gang, had targeted Montoya because of his role in law enforcement.
A 32-year-old policeman was shot to death by gang members when he spotted them in a car near Montoya’s house shortly after the abduction.
Honduras’ crackdown on ruthless youth gangs, known as “maras,” has come to resemble an open war in recent months.
On December 23, gang members opened fire on a public bus crowded with commuters and holiday shoppers, killing 28.
Earlier this month, authorities announced the captured of a heavily armed Nicaraguan man said to have been hired by gang members to assassinate the Honduran president.
“The neighbors reported the incident and we immediately deployed a great number of agents,” Nazar said of Friday’s kidnapping.
After gang members gunned down the officer west of the capital, they were spotted again east of the city, eventually abandoning their vehicle to flee into the mountains.
With the aid of a helicopter, police captured four suspects, who led authorities to Montoya. A 16-year-old was guarding the shack.
Police identified a 20-year-old gang member, Luis Nunez, as the leader of the kidnapping effort. Nunez, whose right arm bore a “police-killer” tattoo, is being investigated in the previous killing of three agents, along with Friday’s events.
Honduras’ Congress approved a law in August 2003 that set 12-year prison sentences for belonging to a gang.
The Mara 18 and rival Mara Salvatrucha, comprising about 100,000 members together, control poor neighborhoods in Honduras’ principal cities using violence, threats and extortion.
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