Mexican police rescue 3 kidnapping victims
Published: December 10, 2005
Police raided a house outside Mexico City, capturing two alleged kidnappers and rescuing three people, including an 8-year-old girl, who had been held for more than two months.
The dramatic morning raid, widely aired on Mexican television, comes amid scrutiny of the Federal Agency of Investigation, the country’s FBI, for connections to drug traffickers and a video showing the killing of a self-described drug hit man.
Federal police officials took reporters on a tour through the house’s filthy rooms where the kidnapping victims were given only a bucket to go to the bathroom. Investigators also seized guns, fake I.D.s, and titles to stolen cars.
Police detained Israel Vallarta, a Mexican, and Marie Louise Cassez Florence, a Frenchwoman, according to a news release from the Federal Attorney General’s Office. The two belong to a gang called “The Zodiac,” tied to at least 10 kidnappings and one murder, the office said.
“The Zodiac gang is characterized by its meticulous studies of its victims - their heritage, solvency and routines,” it said in the release. “It has a well-structured organization.”
Cassez Florence told Mexican national television network Televisa she was simply dating Vallarta and didn’t know the people at the house had been kidnapped.
“I would have reported it,” she told reporters.
Vallarta said he was hired to take care of the house and had nothing to do with the kidnappings.
The victims included a woman and her 8-year-old daughter, who were abducted while walking to the girl’s school outside Mexico City. They were held along with a man who was kidnapped in Chalco, a poor community on the outskirts of Mexico City.
The kidnappers had asked for $100,000 from the man’s family and threatened to cut off a finger if they did not pay, the government news agency Notimex reported. It was unclear how much they had sought for the release of the other two.
Mexico overtook Colombia this year as the world leader in reported kidnappings, according to Mexico’s Citizen Council for Public Safety, a private-sector think tank. Kidnapping is seen as a booming business, especially in and around the capital. Most involve forcing victims with ATM cards to withdraw their daily cash limit, then holding them for another day or two to repeat the process.
The raid comes a week after the publication of a homemade DVD purporting to show four bound men being interrogated before one is shot in the head. The men describe themselves as drug hitmen and also say they worked with Mexican law enforcement agencies.
Mexican Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said the recording was made and leaked to the media to smear Mexican officials who have refused to be bought off by drug traffickers.
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