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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
Police Rescue Kidnapped Mexican Soccer Coach
 IOL
Mexico City - The kidnapped coach of top Mexican soccer club Cruz Azul was freed from a two-month hostage ordeal on Wednesday after police raided a house in a rough district of Mexico City.
Looking shaken and gaunt and sporting a thick beard, Ruben Omar Romano blinked away tears as masked police escorted him from the house where he had been held hostage. Television footage also showed police marching some of the kidnappers to awaiting police cars.
There apparently had been limited contact with Romano's kidnappers since his abduction but police had enough information to raid the hide-out in the crime-ridden residential neighborhood of Iztapalapa, free Romano and make about half a dozen arrests.
Romano told reporters his kidnappers allowed him very little contact with his family but otherwise treated him well.
"I'm thankful to my rescuers and to the press and all my friends," he said. "Right now I want to see my family, they are waiting for me."
Romano, a 47-year-old Argentine, was abducted on July 19 when gunmen pulled him from his car and bundled him into another vehicle following a team practice in the capital.
"It's a great joy," Cruz Azul's vice president, Alfredo Alvarez, told local radio. "This is finally over and we hope that we can all move on from this bitter period, especially Ruben and his family."
Mexico stands alongside Colombia as the worst countries in the world for kidnapping, and abductions are an almost daily occurrence in the capital where criminal gangs abduct anyone from executives to housewives. Victims are sometimes killed even after a ransom is paid.
The soccer world was already targeted in 1999 when Alvaro Campos, father of former Mexican national goalkeeper Jorge Campos, was kidnapped and kept hostage for almost a week.
Romano, who joined Cruz Azul last December after coaching or playing at various Mexican soccer clubs, earns the kind of monthly salary that is dizzying by Mexican standards.
He took Cruz Azul to the final stages of the league championships this year after several poor seasons, although the club is far from its 1970s glory days when it won six league titles, earning the nickname "The Machine."
"I'm very happy. It's a relief," said Cruz Azul defender Denis Caniza of Romano's rescue. |
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